Does anyone know how much corn we produce, how much we use for food and how much we use for other things?

Question

I thought we always WAY overproduced corn and it was done on government subsidies to farmers often...

maybe that was "then" or I'm just not remembering correctly, but if we're way over producing, then why is it such a big deal to use some for ethanol? it is just the volume needed?

I'm really looking for some cites or something that may explain this with some fairly up to date numbers...

perhaps this would be better in another catagory....

Answer 1

The USDA has that information. I have provided a link to a briefing page that has links to more detailed pages.
The second link allows you to put together a query by year, crop. and other attributes.
From the looks of it, right now, we are importing corn and only a small amount of our production is being used for fuel.

The third link is a pdf document that discusses the USDA projections for corn-fuel use. In a nutshell - the amount of fuel demanded by US drivers is too large to ever make corn a major source of fuel. The number of gallons consumed dwarfs the planets ability to produce corn for fuel.

Answer 2

Yes...that was "then"......they manipulate things as they see fit..Right now.....we don't have enough ground to grow things ....let alone add in weather, events or anything else. Right now...it's CORN...sorry.....I get really pissed that people are so ******* stupid that they don't GET that you can only grow CORN for a couple of years before you HAVE to change the crop if you don't want to drain the soil of it's nutrients and turn it into a infertile mass of land. I knew they dummied people down.....but GOD DAMN....we aren't talking about a family garden anymore......it's "global" now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~!!!!