Quote:
Originally Posted by Vman455
Even if there was no ethanol mandate, the fields out here would still be entirely corn and soybeans. We decided collectively several decades ago to incentivize the production of those two crops almost exclusively, in the form of subsidies.
Well, by "we" I mean "the government," which is ostensibly "us."
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That's quite similar to what has been done in some states here in Brazil, mostly Mato Grosso. A lot of corn and soybean is also grown in Goiás, even though most of the Brazilian commercial tomato production shifted from the region of Jundiaí in São Paulo state to Goiás due to tax incentives for the industries. When it comes to corn as a feedstock for ethanol, its growth has been mostly due to the usage of distillation-dried grains to feed livestock. And nowadays that other countries such as China are buying some large amount of corn from local farmers only to leave it rotting away as some sort of subsidy, using that as a feedstock for ethanol makes even more sense.
OTOH maybe the corn-based DDG could also be used more frequently as a replacement for soy protein in food items destinated to human consumption, since allergies to corn are less frequently reported.