Other problem. When there is a need, that corn can be diverted from fuel to food.
I'm not talking about eating it just as corn. It's starch. It's oil. It's food component parts to use to make things humans enjoy.
Corn is everywhere and in everything. In the US at least.
there are also other crops that are better suited for starch/oil. so ultimately, to me, any use of corn other than food is basically just finding a way to subsidize the farmers. i'm not opposed to that, but if we're paying for it anyways, why not grow something better suited for purpose rather than just shoehorning corn as the solution?
Food =/= just eat the corn as is. It's an ingredient in many many many foods. That's what I'm talking about. Starch. Oil.
And no, sweet corn (food corn for humans) is not appropriate to be used as field corn for biofuel. Too high of moisture content, even when dried. It just doesn't store well.
Finally - Per acre, you will be hard pressed to find a crop that can create as many products, including starch and oil, as corn. Please let me know what you're talking about here.
If there is a year where nationwide farm output is, due to bad luck, significantly below average, we can take the crops that were going to make biofuel and use them to make cooking oil.
(IIRC farm output is always somewhat irregular, so this is a fairly plausible scenario).
If that's what's being defended against, it doesn't matter so much if it's a bit meh, it matters that you'd convinced farmers to plant the crops before they knew they'd be eaten. A government can also pay for overproduction of normal crops, but might want to reduce the cost of that by asking for a dual use crop.
I'm still not convinced doing this with corn is good, but it's at least the start of an argument that might convince me.
Also, except for emergencies, the corn wouldn't be diverted but the farmers would plant a different variety or different crop the next year.