It reduces food available because:
1. It occupies farmland that was could otherwise be used for growing human food.
2. It employs human expertise (farmers) who would otherwise be employed growing human food.
3. It uses mechanized equipment that would otherwise be used to grow human food.
But since ethanol started about 15 years ago
the farmers have increased production to cover
it as well as increases in exports.Like from
8 billion bushels to almost 14 billion. So the 1/4
of the 14B used for ethanol leaves 10.5 Billion
bushels for food/feeding.An increase of over 25%
of corn used mainly for food/feeding 15 years ago.
And if other countries who needed food bad, and
exported food when they shouldn’t have(and some have
stopped exporting) hadn’t of sent the wrong signals
to the world markets our farmers would have more acres
corn to help. But when Mex sued us in the WTO because
we dumped cheap corn for years, hurting their farmers,
and populous places like China export food, and short
their people year after year, market gets wrong
directions and a lot of our land sets idle, farmers are
shoved in a bind and farm coops/business found ethanol
was a way to get markets they needed. But our farmers
still increased output for food as well as making a
little extra market with ethanol.In light of increases
I don’t feel ethanol has shorted us.Ed Hubel