The corn varieties grown for industrial ethanol production are mutually exclusive with the corn varieties grown for human consumption; you cannot use one for the other. They might as well be corn vs soy beans.
Also, most corn (and soybeans) is for animal food anyway. Very little of the corn grown in the US is for human consumption.
My understanding(not a corn farmer but have watched a show by one on youtube) is the farmer will harvest the corn then dry and store it, selling over the course of a year or two, the ethanol plant is sort of the fallback option when they need to get rid if it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSB-8dn3CkI
Personally, I am in the rapeseed bandwagon. Ethanol is not a very good fuel, better to be growing bio-diesel
Yup, just as a point of reference, something like 70% of Illinois corn goes straight into Illinois hogs.
Not exactly. You wouldn't normally eat "industrial ethanol corn" off the cob, which is what you are probably trying to suggest, but it is often used in other corn-based food like tortilla chips, and, of course, its most infamous use: High-fructose corn syrup.
I grow corn. I grow it to be sold. Whatever the buyer decides to do with it — be that feed it to animals, turn it into tortilla chips, make sweeteners, create plastic for 3D printers, produce ethanol, or even burn it in their furnace — is up to them.