Corn Ethanol is Bunk

The US Govt would like you to believe that corn-based ethanol is good for the world and America. Even if you forget for the moment the ridiculous inefficiencies of using corn as a fuel and the massive petroleum fuel requirements needed to turn corn into ethanol, the high demand for corn is now going to affect how much it costs for you to drink away the pain of our painfully inept government. With corn in high demand for ethanol purposes, farmers have switched from growing other grains to grow corn. This has driven up the price of food items like soy, livestock(which often use corn-based feed), and especially corn meant for human consumption. But breweries and drinkers alike are starting to feel the pain as the high prices have also been hitting barley and hops. Breweries, especially craft breweries which use alot more hops and barley in their beer(which is what keeps them from tasting like water like the buds and coors of the world) are gettting squeezed by the prices and causing increases in the price of beer. I am not cool with any fuel alternative that starts upping my beer tab, but I'm especially not cool with what is at best a short term band-aid solution that is likely to cause even more problems than using straight oil would.

Converting corn to ethanol requires massive amounts of fossil fuels(farm and ranch equipment, refining process, etc) and once it is turned into fuel, it's less efficient than burning petroleum products as fuel(see David Pimentel's studies on the energy balance of biomass as fuel). Not to mention the skyrocketing food prices(which are quite conveniently not included in the economic inflation index) as farmers quit growing other crops to focus on corn and even then that corn won't be used as food. With the number of people starving in this country and the world, how can you justify taking food off of tables in exchange for a non viable fuel alternative. In addition, worldwide, millions of acres of timberland and forests are being clearcut in order to grow even more corn(oh yeah, the clearcutting uses even more diesel burning equipment, so it's a double loss). I can see only one reason that corn-based ethanol has gotten any air time at all in the US and that is because swing states in the midwest have a shitload of corn-growing voters.