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Ethanol advocates claim that the biofuel is a cheap, renewable energy source that reduces pollution and our dependence on foreign oil. It sounds too good to be true—and it is.

Ethanol, especially the corn-based variety, is bad for taxpayers, bad for consumers, bad for the environment, and horrible for the world’s poor. In fact, even environmentalists are critical of ethanol subsidies these days. The ethanol craze has distorted markets and increased the price of food worldwide. The only people who still support ethanol subsidies are the ethanol producers—and politicians from both sides of the aisle. Together, they make sure the subsidies keep coming.

In a recent interview about the current food crisis, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said, “If part of our problem is that the Chinese are going to eat meat and you’ve got to have corn and soybeans to feed the Chinese their meat, then why isn’t it just as legitimate for the Chinese to go back and eat rice as it is for us to change our policy on corn to ethanol?”

Let them eat rice? So that American taxpayers can continue to pay people to turn corn into fuel?

Silly senator, corn is for food.

This seven-and-a-half-minute video explores the case against ethanol subsidies. Hosted by reason’s Nick Gillespie and featuring Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey, it was produced by Paul Feine and PF Bentley.

For an audio podcast version, go here.

http://www.chron.com/…

The Environmental Protection Agency today denied Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s request to reduce federal ethanol requirements this year.

The decision dealt a blow to Perry and a broad consortium of industry groups that claim rising U.S. ethanol output is inflating corn prices, hurting livestock and food producers and boosting grocery bills.

But in a noon conference call, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the federal Renewable Fuel Standard that sets the ethanol requirement isn’t causing “severe economic harm,” which would be required to justify a waiver, and is improving national security and benefiting farmers.

In a statement, Perry said he was “greatly disappointed with the EPA’s inability to look past the good intentions of this policy to see the significant harm it is doing to farmers, ranchers and American households.”

“For the EPA to assert that this federal mandate is not affecting food prices not only goes against common sense, but every American’s grocery bill,” he said.

• National security claim: bullshit
• Helping farmer claim: obviously true, the government is subsidizing the manufacturing of the ethanol and forcing gas companies to include it into their fuel.
• Helping the environment claim: From Wikipedia “Combustion of ethanol in an internal combustion engine yields many of the products of incomplete combustion that are produced by gasoline and significantly larger amounts of formaldehyde and related species such as formalin, acetaldehyde, etc..^[40] This leads to a significantly larger photochemical reactivity that generates much more ground level ozone.^[41]” At an 34% energy yield it’s far less efficient too when compared to sugar cane ethanol with an 800% yield.

http://www.openmarket.org/2008/07/07/europe-rethinks-deadly-ethanol-mandates/

Since ethanol mandates cause deforestation and skyrocketing food prices, the European Union is now reconsidering its biofuel mandates.  Ethanol subsidies have many bad effects.  They have caused rioting and starvation in many poor countries.  They also have harmed the environment and increased food prices and support for Islamic extremists.

Looks like the market has spoken.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

Not content with a protected near monopoly of the domestic market, American sugar producers are demanding that Congress make their pot of subsidies and protection even sweeter.

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.), is pushing language in the latest proposed farm bill that would raise domestic price supports for sugar and mandate that sugar imports be used for ethanol production.

His proposals would virtually lock in an 85 percent share of the U.S. market for domestic sugar beet and cane growers, even though a number of foreign countries can grow sugar more cheaply than most American growers. And by the way, did I mention that Rep. Peterson’s district is among the nation’s top producers of sugar beets?

The Bush administration, to its credit, opposes Peterson’s changes in the farm bill. The sugar industry, of course, loves the idea. A spokesman for the pro-protection American Sugar Alliance told this morning’s Wall Street Journal, “We have an administration that seems more interested in supporting foreign producers, than producers right here in America.”

Notice the sugar industry doesn’t mention American consumers. U.S. agricultural policies should not be about favoring “our” producers over “theirs,” but about advancing such national interests as freedom, prosperity, and a more peaceful world. As we’ve explained in detail at the Center for Trade Policy Studies, the U.S. sugar program favors American sugar producers primarily at the expense of the rest of America. American families pay higher prices at the store, while U.S. producers that use sugar as an input — bakeries, food processors, restaurants, candy makers, etc. — incur higher costs because of our sugar program.

As we read daily in the newspaper about soaring food prices, this Congress is the verge of passing a farm bill designed explicitly to raise domestic food prices.

::sigh::

They cause the high sugar prices in the first place. They cause the high prices of milk. The high prices of wheat and corn and soy beans. They deflate the money and cause prices in general to rise. The people of world and particularly the American public suffers so that the few sugar manufacturers my thrive.

And when the people start to revolt they will ignorantly run to the government to fix the problem not realizing they caused it in the first place.