Corn is the US climate friendly equivalent of sugarcane. Sugar cane is the most harvested crop worldwide. Sugarcane has heavy import tariffs in the US as welfare for the domestic corn industry.
Brazil has a 22% Ethanol requirement on its gasoline and all that comes from sugar cane.
The previous three comments, from three different people, all seem to think that we're stuck with corn syrup because we can't grow enough sugarcane in the US.
But sugarcane is not the only way to produce sucrose!
Sugar beets currently account for 55% of sugar production in the United States. [1]
What's more, sugar beets will grow in relatively poor soil. Top four sugarbeet-producing states: Minnesota, Idaho, North Dakota, and Michigan [2].
Notice how these are not states renowned for the quality of their soil. Idaho grows a lot of potatoes not because they want to, but because the soil won't support a more valuable crop.
So, we're chewing up our best agricultural land and paying billions of dollars in subsidies to grow an inferior substitute to sucrose. Instead of growing the real thing on our marginal agricultural lands.
Where beets are grown in MN and ND is actually some of the best land in the country. Sugar beet subsidies are an even bigger boondoggle than corn. As the beet welfare queens retire or die off their land is generally bought out by a larger concern and switched over to another cash crop like GMO free soybeans for the Japanese market.
If you were being paid more money to grow beets on land that could support soybeans, why wouldn't you grow beets? It's economically rational to the farmer who's getting subsidies -- even though it's economically irrational for the world as a whole.
Subsidies distort the market, and produce completely illogical results. You can't get rid of just one subsidy, because that just gives an advantage to the next-most-subsidized item. But remove all the subsidies, and things will return to an economically-rational state of affairs.
I would be all about increasing reliance on sugar beet crops if it wasn't for one thing. Sugar beets have one of the highest utilizations of genetically modified seeds. If we are going to use mire of it lets get Monsanto out of the picture.
The other thing is most people don't realize how many things HFCS is in. Ketchup, iced tea, most cereals, most "fruit" drinks.
By the way,.Brazil gasoline alcoholis are currently US corn alcohol.
US subsidies to corn and subsidies to.any ethanol.resulted that selling cane ethanol to US and buying corn ethanol turns a profit for fuel.companies. Yes, it is that bad, diesel.pollution with shipping and all.
The problem in Brazil is more structural and political than it has to do with US corn subsidies. Through Petobras, the government kept gasoline prices artificially low for a long time and that severely hampered the ethanol producer because here in Brasil the ethanol prices are tied to the gasoline ones (an important part of the ethanol demand is the flex fuel cars that can choose between both fuels and if ethanol is above 70% of the cost of gasoline then gasoline becomes more cost effective).
So basically the ethanol infrastructure got all messed up to the point were it couldn't even keep up with the domestic supply. If it were not for that then brazilian ethanol would actually be able to compete with some of the american ethanol because sugar cane gives higher yields and nowadays you can charge a premium for being more environmentally friendly.
