Corn is the US climate friendly equivalent of sugarcane. Sugar cane is the most harvested crop worldwide. Sugarcane has heavy import tariffs in the US as welfare for the domestic corn industry.
Brazil has a 22% Ethanol requirement on its gasoline and all that comes from sugar cane.
But sugarcane is not the only way to produce sucrose!
Sugar beets currently account for 55% of sugar production in the United States. [1]
What's more, sugar beets will grow in relatively poor soil. Top four sugarbeet-producing states: Minnesota, Idaho, North Dakota, and Michigan [2].
Notice how these are not states renowned for the quality of their soil. Idaho grows a lot of potatoes not because they want to, but because the soil won't support a more valuable crop.
So, we're chewing up our best agricultural land and paying billions of dollars in subsidies to grow an inferior substitute to sucrose. Instead of growing the real thing on our marginal agricultural lands.
It's not even close.
Sources:
[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/sugar-sweeteners/backgr...
[2] http://www.fas.usda.gov/info/factsheets/CAFTA/statesugarprod...
Subsidies distort the market, and produce completely illogical results. You can't get rid of just one subsidy, because that just gives an advantage to the next-most-subsidized item. But remove all the subsidies, and things will return to an economically-rational state of affairs.
If the total amount of subsidy $ is reduced, it will be an improvement.
The other thing is most people don't realize how many things HFCS is in. Ketchup, iced tea, most cereals, most "fruit" drinks.
US subsidies to corn and subsidies to.any ethanol.resulted that selling cane ethanol to US and buying corn ethanol turns a profit for fuel.companies. Yes, it is that bad, diesel.pollution with shipping and all.
So basically the ethanol infrastructure got all messed up to the point were it couldn't even keep up with the domestic supply. If it were not for that then brazilian ethanol would actually be able to compete with some of the american ethanol because sugar cane gives higher yields and nowadays you can charge a premium for being more environmentally friendly.