RS replied. Not intelligently. Not suprisingly.

FWIW; I tend to disagree about the corn. It is renewable, but
generally only with the expense of a large amount of non-renewable
resources. Corn takes oil to cultivate and plow,

Yes it does. I calculated it out. From last years numbers (personal),
it took me a whopping 0.14 gallons of diesel per bushel. Add to that
0.04 gallons of LP. Hardly significant. That accounts for ~27000 BTUs
of the potential ~392,000 in a bushel. Leaves 365000 BTU per bushel
net. A gallon of fuel is only 140,000 BTU. That means we have around
the equivalent of 2.5 gallons of diesel fuel left yet.

fertilize and apply
pesticides (generally they are petroleum-based as well). I sstrongly
Fertilizer is generally petroleum based. Pesticides are not. I don't
know the exact chemistry and conversion process so I can't say how much
net fuel would have been yielded otherwise. FWIW - net cost of
fertilizer is ~$0.345/bu.

suspect that there is a net energy loss in the use of corn as a fuel.
Not really. It is primarily a conversion of the energy captured from
the sun in a highly dense format. Like I said, I dont' know how much
fuel could have been generated in lieu of fertilizer, but I doubt it
would account for the balance mentioned previously.

Archer-Daniels-Midland seems to be the biggest pusher of corn for
non-food uses; but that's the business they are in. Very heavily
subsidized.
The reports of how heavily subsidized agriculture is, are generally
overblown. I won't dispute that certain segments do recieve
disproportionate subsidies. However, most reports are so ridiculously
erroneous/deceptive they could just as well have been printed in the
Enquirer/Star/etc. Last year, the local printed the list of the
highest reciepients of the LDP checks. The #1 on the list was ADM.
While true, this was very misleading. The reason ADM is the highest is
that they had acted as a clearing house for many producers and handled
all of the volume certifications and paperwork. The producers recieved
the check indirectly through ADM. ADM did not actually keep the
checks.

FWIW - net costs to produce a bushel of corn(for me) are ~$1.38/bu.
This is just production cost(including land cost). Not taking into
account interest/capital expense/etc.

Now granted I may be somewhat biased, but burning corn seems like a
reasonable alternative to liquid/gas fuels. Biodiesel would certainly
be an alternative as well. Rapeseed would be a good source for that.
Soybeans are not. The oil capacity is just not really there. Another
alternative might be ethanol from sugarcane. These are all dependent
on the local infrastructure.

JW