Why can't we (Americans) do like brazil and run all automobiles off homegrown sugarcane based ethonal.?

Question

Brazil use absolutely 0 gasoline and has millions of cars. They have no energy problem and booming agriculture. Do we not do this because it would be too easy or do we want to spend all of our money on foreign oil and destroy the planet?

Answer 1

Sugarcane doesn't grow too well in most of the US, that's unfortunately we use corn to make our ethanol.

I think a better question would be why does the US still have a 50% tariff on all imported sugar?  If we dropped this tax, we could make ethanol a lot more efficiently rather than using corn, it would almost make sense to have E85 gasoline then.  But no, I guess we would rather import oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran then sugar from Brazil.

Answer 2

Sugar cane is not that much different that corn stalks, they both belong to the sorghum family, however Cord does grow here, where sugar cane will only grow in the southern states, and yes you can make ethanol from the corn stalks.

however most of the corn stalk is ground for cattle fodder.

and is feed to the dairy cattle.

we can also use many of the by products from sugar beets, even  the pulp left over from making sugar from the beets.

Answer 3

how many cars and trucks are there in Brazil?

also, keep in mind that you can only grow sugar cane in places like S. Florida.

used to grow in Hawaii.

it never freezes there.

it does freeze in Florida.

so, we can't grow much at all.

and have lots more cars.

Answer 4

Sugarcane doesn't grow in North America like it does in Brazil. We'd never be able to meet our own demand.

I'm not a fan of the corn based ethanol because corn is one of the most destructive crops there is in terms of soil depletion.  Plant enough corn over and over, and pretty soon you're looking at a wasteland where good cropland used to be.

Answer 5

Ethanol is not a solution either. It is still fuel for cars that requires vast resources and land to create. What we need to do is not worry about or energy problem but worry about our eco-destruction. We never needed energy, we lived for many many many thousands of years without cars and power plants and ethanol and oil and all of that junk and we should and need to do it again. We just need to detox from energy and use things like the sun and wind sparingly till we can go without it!

Answer 6

Brazil also has a lot less cars.

You'd do better to deal with electricity production which is much easier to fix (just dig some more Uranium out of the ground (or dispose of old warheads)).

Answer 7

I have been told that sugar cane does not grow well in most of North America. Sugar beets grow well, so why not use them, though they are not very big? They are as big a cob full of kernals aren't they?

Answer 8

i didn't know that,

it's because the goverments are retarded, here in canada they dont even allow electric cars.....b******s

Answer 9

we have a bigger economy, and at the moment, one that is a lot worse than Brazil. sugarcane doesn't grow well here in the U.S. what we should focus on is making renewable fuels such as solar and wind. some major companies are doing this, such as British Petroleum and Toyota.