That being said, subsidies or special tax breaks for any industry, ethanol and oil industries included, are a bad idea.
West of the Mississippi River does always get enough rain.
Thus many large —expensive—water storage projects.
Hence the old west sayings
The argument is that the land used to cultivate this corn had been used to produce food prior to the subsidies.
True enough, but "rain" water is essential to agriculture and often in short supply in many parts of our corn farming areas. As I'm sure you know, the aquifers that underlie many large swaths of prime US agricultural regions are in serious danger of depletion, so "rain" water isn't anything to be wasted by supplying an inefficient, taxpayer subsidized industry such as ethanol production. Affordable food and fiber are far more important products than subsidized gas-ahol that only a relative handful of far-left Green fanatics want to force on the rest of us.
“The water claimed to be used by ethanol is commonly known as “rain””
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Look at South Carolina on the map, notice the lakes, rivers and swamps, read the annual rainfall figures. Corn growers, even here, use a lot of irrigation pumps. One old gent that I see in church on Sundays has run a big farming operation in Darlington county for almost his entire adult life. He tells me there is little point in planting corn, even sweet corn in the garden unless you are prepared to water it. The annual rainfall may be plenty for corn but there is usually a dry spell that lasts for several weeks right at the time the corn needs it most and should be getting two or more inches of water a WEEK for maximum production. As school children we used to recite, “April showers bring May flowers”, nowadays the month of April is often bone dry here. It is not unusual to have very little rainfall from early April until late May or even longer. This is when corn needs a lot of water.