Comment by toomuchtodo
9 hours ago
~60 million acres of corn and soybean in the US, the size of Oregon, is grown exclusively for biofuels. This is unnecessary as you mention, as are the subsidies to farmers for these row crops.
9 hours ago
~60 million acres of corn and soybean in the US, the size of Oregon, is grown exclusively for biofuels. This is unnecessary as you mention, as are the subsidies to farmers for these row crops.
Which could be easily converted in one harvest to feed a nation if needed. That option is very valuable.
Do those crops contribute to the negative numbers reported since most people don't buy biofuel? Or does it contribute something positive to the numbers with government subsidies guaranteeing returns?
I haven't studied the economics of the biofuel farming.
Corn is turned into ethanol, and is then blended with gasoline. The US consumes ~14B gallons of ethanol per year. It’s a net negative because it’s carbon and water intensive and farmers advocate for more ethanol than is necessary as a subsidy via government mandate.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/03/environm...
https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/news-releases...