It can be assumed that they use about 5.444 B/bushels of corn a year. That is very close to 40% to 44% of the total USA corn production. Other grains have to be used as animal feeds and it has a major impact on the price of meat, eggs, milk, pasta, bread, pastry, and many other food items.

With the majority having to do with little change in salary during the last 5+ years, large families will have more problems to make ends meet. It is a smart way to make the majority poorer and the large feed stock producers richer.

One solution to use-produce less corn based ethanol and/or other liquid fuels would be to reduce liquid fuel consumption by up to 50% as quickly as possible. Going from 18 mpg to 36 mpg gas guzzlers would certainly help but something like 54 mpg gas guzzlers may be required.

To avoid worldwide food shortages and high food prices, specially during a severe long lasting financial recession, the introduction of more efficient electrified vehicles using much less liquid fuel is becoming unavoidable.

Until such times as electrified vehicles become affordable and available, NG/SG and coal could be converted to liquid fuels to feed the part of the current and near future ICEV fleet.

Reel$$...unfortunately, the number of poor people in USA is growing at almost the same rate as corn ethanol production. Using edible grains to produce fuel for our gas guzzlers is NOT the solution because it has too much of a negative impact on 90+% getting poorer day by day. Very few (less than 1%) really benefit.

An acceptable interim measure could be to transform plentiful non-edibles such as NG/SG, Coal, forest wastes, domestic wastes, industrial wastes etc into liquid fuels for our inefficient gas guzzlers. The price of food would stop rising and the country could get rid of useless wastes.

Reel$$...we are overdue for a major change in financial distribution fundamentals. Current growth is almost entirely based on continued unsustainable increase in debt, at all levels. The debt bubble has only one way to go. Unless something is done soon, it will burst in our face. Nobody (except the 1%) is immune. The recent minor increase in personal income and spending in USA is due to lower income tax and the Fed going deeper in debt.

Most countries in EU are following the same trend with the exception of Oil/NG exporters like Norway, Russia and a few others. Canada may be in a slightly better position with lower debt levels and major Oil-NG-Electricity-Aluminium, multiple mineral exports and the recent purchase of major Oil/mines access by China, but it will also be affected when the debt bubble burst.

We may have to stop financing the wrong decisions (like corn ethanol) with borrowed money and make matters worst.

"yes 44% of corn production to produce the equivalent of 0.6M barrels par day.
Posted by: Treehugger"

That is about a quarter of the worlds daily excess production of oil.. if ethanol was removed from the market oil prices would just explode... and high fructose corn syrup is still dirt cheap, some people even burn corn to produce heat.