[epistasis]

There is an over abundance of farming on the great plains, and nearly none of it goes to feeding humans. It's corn, soybeans, and sugar beets in Minnesota. A lot of it is used for industrial purposes, for creating ethanol for vehicle fuel, and for feeding livestock.

If we took even a fraction of the fields that are used for ethanol and did solar farms instead, we could power our entire transportation energy needs. It's hard to overstate the inefficiency of using farm fields for ethanol. We just have such a huge over abundance of farmland that this inefficiency doesn't really matter.

Honestly, it would be best to pay farmers to restore a lot of farmland back to plains, instead of subsidizing such huge amounts of overproduction of inedible crops and sugar.

[1234letshaveatw]

Do you prefer drilling for oil over ethanol? it isn't overproduction if it is being utilized for livestock or fuel. Nobody (besides maybe Jeremey Clarkson) is out there farming for fun.

[sleepydog]

> Do you prefer drilling for oil over ethanol?

This comes off as a rhetorical question, but to me it's not obvious that burning ethanol derived from corn supported by fertilizer made from fossil fuels is less detrimental for the environment than burning fossil fuels directly. I expect there are many sets of criteria that make one or the other worse.

At least, the efficiency of ethanol vs gasoline seems to be a controversial topic, as I can find lots of studies and opinion pieces favoring each position. If anyone could help shed some light I'd appreciate it.

[toss1]

Ethanol contains only about 67% of the available energy of gasoline on a gallon-gallon basis [0]. So mixing ethanol gasoline into gasoline will result in a noticeable loss of mile-per-gallon efficiency.

Agree that both are effectively releasing CO2 from either deep in the earth or from the soil, so replacing them with solar power generation on the fields would be a net plus, and probably a greater energy density. We could also use the new-ish practice of installing vertical solar panels between tractor rows of crops, which doesn't reduce the solar yield too much and allows both 'crops' to yield something.

That said, returning a lot to natural ecosystem may be necessary to our survival.

[0] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties

[epistasis]

A lot of people are out there farming for the subsidies, however.

I dont know whether ethanol or oil extraction is worse for the environment, but solar panels instead of corn for ethanol seems like a huge win.