> At least that's what I hear over here in Europe, maybe motivations are different in the US. The real reason corn-based ethanol is politically supported in th

> At least that's what I hear over here in Europe, maybe motivations are different in the US. The real reason corn-based ethanol is politically supported in the US is because of an artifact of the US federal political process. Iowa is the first state to hold caucuses [1], to a first approximation explanation. This exerts an effect similar to first mover advantage: their outcomes have a disproportionate effect upon other states' primaries [2] (linked article gives a better, more nuanced explanation than a glib "they're first"). Not coincidentally for this topic, Iowa grows a lot of corn [3], the most of any state in the US, and more than all of Mexico combined. The two major parties are terrified of pissing off Iowa voters who personally depend upon the corn economy in Iowa. So corn-based ethanol stays encrusted into the US federal political landscape, until an Alexander-like politician cuts it in half, Gordian Knot-mythos-like [4]. Either that, or until Iowa's shortsighted monocropping causes them to irretrievably lose their topsoil, and they can't grow anything at scale, and removing the subsidies becomes moot; at the macro scale, they're eroding their topsoil with no end in sight. I SWAG a few more decades before we reach an inflection point, where input costs to prop up poor topsoil corn growing start to negate the subsidies' artificial boost. That's going to really suck for our food supply system, if it comes down to that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucuses [2] https://people.howstuffworks.com/iowa-caucus.htm https://people.howstuffworks.com/iowa-caucus.htm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot