Is the "corn" that is used in ethanol production, the same kind of corn humans usually eat?

Question

In other words, are farmers growing two different types of corn so that the price of human edible corn should not affect ethanol produced corn as long as farmers continue to grow the edible type?

Answer 1

Yes they are two different types of corn.

Answer 2

it is basically the same corn (slightly different breed though, for higher ethanol yields - the poster below has a far better description), but it doesn't matter anyway because growing additional corn for the sake of growing ethanol means you will have less space to grow other crops or you will have less corn to sell for food. so prices of pretty much everything that could have been planted there will rise, and you will end up paying for this privilege in taxes.

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I stand by my comments regarding ethanol subsidies. If you grow less food domestically, less domestic food will be available. I would hope most find that to be common sense. Imports would rise, but thanks to rising energy/transportation costs, the price of imports will rise (domestic food as well).

Sure, speculation is an issue (I'll probably run out of space if I expound on that so I won't bother), I would also think that it would be common sense that the energy demand/costs are increasing and will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.

Again, since you will have less space available for the growing of food crops (even if 1% of all fields are dedicated to ethanol, that is still potentially 1% lost food production capability) and food prices (both of domestic and import) are rising simultaneously due to rising energy costs, all you will end up doing driving up food prices further. Paying the farmers to waste their land making ethanol that gives less energy (or a slight bit more, debatable) than the energy needed to produce it just adds insult to injury.

Allowing the cellulose to be used to generate energy would be quite useful though.

i have no idea what I just wrote and it probably makes no sense

hey thanks for downvoting my answer, I appreciate it

Answer 3

its edible.  a few years ago the news was talking about how using more corn base ethanol was going to lower prices of gasoline.  recently the news now says due to the high demand of ethanol it has driven up the price of corn... look how much progress we made yay!

Answer 4

We eat 'sweet' corn. Ethanol comes from 'dent' corn. While it IS edible, it's mostly used in processed foods and corn syrup/ corn based products from corn flakes to plastics.

Food prices are rising because of speculation. Corn producers are still being paid NOT to grow as much as they can. Don't fall for the scare tactics of nay-sayers.

Also, ethanol from cellulose is getting closer to reality every day.

Answer 5

Well it is probably not sweet corn, but it is similar (or the same, I'm not sure)  as that used for corn meal and it is the same as used for animal feed. . As another answer said, it takes crop land, so it will affect food price, and not just the price of sweet corn, since many food animals are fed corn, the price of those will rise too. Also when the price of some foods rise, there will be greater demand for alternatives, so the price of those will rise too.