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Comment by coryrc | Hacker News Reader

"The fuel consumes more than 40% of the nation’s corn supply"

Good thing we're not approaching global famine.

Global imo not the USA. US is not a net importer of food, but an exporter. Most of the imported food can be grown in the states also three of the top four food imports to the US are used for/are beverages i.e. wine, coffee, and malt beverages. Also the reason why so much money went into ethanol research is because of the massive corn wastage that happens every year. Maybe the US should crank up food export, but demand is for wheat not corn.

Agreed, we won't face even scarcity, I expect. But it's a bad look (and just bad) to be pouring food into cars while people starve due to conflicts they have no influence over.

Corn is what we got, so I wish we'd plan to help others eat with it.

I wouldn't be surprised if some games were played so that we're exporting all the food while people here starve similar to the Holodomor in Ukraine.

Different corn.

Still occupies acreage that could be used to grow something else.

Great. Not the OPs point.

I think it is. The US wastes great expanses of land to grow corn when that land and resources could be better used for actual food.

I suppose if you tried hard enough you could process ethanol corn into food, but it wouldn't be that healthy I'd imagine. You can't really change crops mid season very easily or cost effectively. I suppose we could lament the opportunity cost of not planting human food instead, but the fields and farms may not be setup in terms of fertilizer and seed to handle that change in crop.

>I suppose if you tried hard enough you could process ethanol corn into food, but it wouldn't be that healthy I'd imagine.

Unhealthy in what sense? That it's all carbs? Or that it's toxic for human consumption? If it's the former and you're starving, it being high carbs is the least of your worries.

It's not. We eat the corn, just in different forms. The vast majority of corn is used as feedstock, or to produce HFCS. This is the same corn used to make ethanol.

Also, the inputs (fertilizer, etc) are shared across the entire agri sector.

You’re agreeing with me.

“Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol.“

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

I'm not at all. You posted this verbatim, and I replied lower down. This is a very uninformed take.

We still eat the corn. Your implication that this corn isn't consumed by people and thus not a competing with the food supply is absolutely untrue.

Ethanol is edible as calories. I'm sure there are other ways to make human-edible food out of this, like HFCS.

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