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"Food & Beverages—Corn has gone up quite a bit in price, as has fuel for running farm equipment"
Yeah, but that's a separate crime sprung on us by Archer-Daniels-Midland and other members of the Big Agriculture Business. Agro-alcohol makes sense if, like Brazil, you have lots of sugar cane waste (bagasse) to provide the heat, and you don't mind clearcutting rain forests to get land. The process is something like 10x more efficient than farming foodstock corn and converting it--which ADM just LOVES to do in the US, as it raises corn prices sky high.
Gasahol, in the US with existing technologies, is a scam. Especially when you look at how gas mileage in cars goes down when we burn it. If some of the new technologies (bacterial conversion, etc.) come online...great, but right now gasahol is just an ADM rip-off of the rubes. Too many people have run the numbers, and the only winner is the corn growers. Who advertise heavily on Sunday morning TV, farm radio, and Congressional lobbies.
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