JoeSixPack wrote:

....
The only reason corn ethanol is that cheap is because of massive,
overlapping subsidies on both growing the corn and in processing it for
ethanol. A recent study found that it takes more energy to produce ethanol
than the ethanol contains.

Ethanol production subsidies have no bearing on the production cost of
the grain which is currently about $2/bu for feed corn--that used for
ethanol production doesn't need to be that good, even.

The "massive" farm program subsidies are more used for non-production
programs such as school lunch programs and food stamps.

The "study" of which you speak is both out of date in data and
wrong--see

http://www.eere.energy.gov/biomass/n...y_balance.html

for a more considered evaluation. Note that Pimental has consistently
not considered the value of the animal feedstock co-product in order to
make his conclusion in all studies I've seen.

Latest DOE studies vary from 1.3 to nearly 2, depending on the actual
processes considered...