This article is full of errors. It suggests that 40 per cent of the corn crop is diverted into fuel, rather than food.
The truth is very little corn is eaten directly, virtually all the corn is grown as cattle feed. Ethanol production merely turns the starch into fuel. The resulting mash is fed to cattle, same as before!
I bet she was one of those who complained about subsidies, and, paying farmers “not” to grow corn. Well if so, she got her wish. Corn was $2 a bushel in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and ... Well you get the idea.
That mantra about ‘burning food’ just won’t go away. We use little field corn as food [maybe 10%]and the price of corn has darn little to do with the price of corn products that do use #2 Dent. A $4 box of corn flakes uses about 5 cents worth of corn. We export almost as much as we use for ethanol and we feed the cake from ethanol manufacture to livestock as you said.
Imagine the uproar if people caught on to the fact that many rural folks use corn as an actual fuel to heat their houses. It’s messier than wood, in my opinion, but the feed system, if set up right, saves you from running out to carry logs in.