Is it practical to switch to sugar cane ethanol instead of staying with corn ethanol?

Question

The benefits of wwitching to surgar cane are far better than that of corn ethanol. It produces 8 times the amount of ethanol, and is releasing 80% less pollutants than corn ethanol. Plus, it will cost alot less than the current gas prices.

The main benefit, and my primary question, is how do we get around the corn farmers from suffering? Subsidaries, or is this not possible?

Answer 1

With the global warming, shouldn't be any problem starting grow sugar cane from the south to the north in ths USA.

Answer 2

MORE CORN IS GROWN IN THE US THAN SUGAR CANE

Answer 3

It is not practical, at least not in the United States.  In the United States, corn will grow better in most places than Sugar Cane will.  We would have to import the sugar cane and it would cost MORE than the current oil prices are. Corn, while inefficient, is much cheaper.

Answer 4

Like many government programs and incentives corn based ethanol was a bad idea to start with. But it did help corn farmers. If we are going to get serious about ethanol I am sure that the government and universities have done enough research to know what crop to grow (like switch grass) that would increase yields and grow well in this country. I was under the impression that using ethanol was supposed to be for the good of the country and not just benefit corn farmers. If we switch to different crops the price of corn will go down lowering food prices. But the farmers can then grow the more efficient crops, so it is not like we would be putting them out of work.

Answer 5

Ethanol from any food source is too costly.   Seen the price of meat going up lately?   It's because of ethanol using so much animal feed up.   The $250,000,000,000 farm subsidy was just something to buy votes with.   Corn prices have gone up over 400% in the last couple years.

Answer 6

Brazil produces a very large amount of ethanol from sugar cane at a very low cost.

We can buy ethanol from Brazil and import that ethanol to the United States at a much lower cost than we can produce the same ethanol from corn grown in the United States.

Unfortunately we currently have anachronistic trade barriers in place to prevent that.

Answer 7

Growing sugar cane requires a warmer climate than what we have in most of the United States. It does grow well in Brazil because that is a tropical country.