this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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What if there is another potato famine, (added: another potato destroying mold)? That corn creates food security because it can always be used as food while the ethanol is replaced with petrol.
Corn grown for ethanol is not edible by humans. Also, do you really think growing only 29,750,000 acres of corn instead of 30,000,000 acres is a meaningful difference? Because it's not.
You suggest to grown none of those 30 million that are used for ethanol. That would be 30 million acres less out of 90 million that are used for corn. That's a major chamge.
Corn grown for ethanol would not help in a food shortage, so for the idea of a food shortage, it is.......... not helpful.
We have plenty of land not being used right now that could be used to grow food.
But we don't have a shortage of food. We have food being wasted and thrown away. We have plenty of excess food. This is like being worried about your driveway taking up valuable lawn space. It's...... not.
Others have pointed out that it can be eaten as staple food.
Land doesn't help if there is no food.
A reserve is for out of ordinary situations.
You can also scour the ground for pennies just in case you run out of money, too. It'll technically bring in more money than you had before.
You could also keep a stash of aluminum cans to turn in for money as well in case you run out of money.
But the amounts of help these things would do is so incredibly minimal that there are much better uses of your time.
Yes. Technically. Growing less than one percent of the land we grow for ethanol corn would mean that extra less than one percent of corn we really don't want to eat JUST IN CASE we needed that last tiny bit.
We could also easily open far more than that in farmland and grow other crops that are more edible first.
But yes, technically, we could grow food we neither want nor need.
Are you happy now?
I am sorry but I am not happy.
It was 30%.It could be used otherwise if we used elecrric cars but that wouldn't create food security.
Well, not starving to death is a reasonable cause to do something.
Then there is other surplus food that has to be thrown away, or also be turned into ethanol.
For food it's worth having a surplus. The bad part is that food is turned into ethanol while people starve to death.
We do not fucking need that land for food. There is no shortage of food. Nobody is fucking starving due to a lack of food. There is a lack of distribution, yes. But not a fucking lack of food.
Furthermore, converting 250k acres of that corn that we are NOT FUCKING EATING BECAUSE IT IS BEING USED FOR ETHANOL into solar that powers cars instead would ALLOW US TO GAIN ALMOST 30,000,000 ACRES OF LAND TO GROW FOOD.
Food that we do not fucking need in the first place.
Jesus fucking christ.
Have a nice day. I'm done. Goodbye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_breadbasket_failure
You know the Irish wouldn't have starved so bad if the Brits didn't insist they export all food that wasn't potatoes. Let's not use bad policies as an example for why we can't have good policies.
I meant to say that the problem could be another potato destroing mold. The famine could be avoided by switching to ethanol corn.
Not growing that corn would lead to the same result as exporting it.