[Mr. Lucky]

It has nothing to do with these subsidies that everyone seems to conjur up, but with yield and value. An acre of midwestern land will produce , what, five times as much corn as canola?

[pillbox_girl]

It has nothing to do with these subsidies that everyone seems to conjur up,

It's United States Agriculture. Therefore, by definition, it has everything to do with subsidies.

An acre of midwestern land will produce , what, five times as much corn as canola?

Possibly that much.

However, the corn from that acre will yield in Ethanol only a tiny fraction of the BTUs that the same acre would yield in BioDiesel made from Canola. We are discussing BTU's produced, not harvest weight.

Ethanol comes from fermenting sugar. BioDiesel comes from transesterifying vegetable oils. There is a lot more energy in oil and the resulting BioDiesel than in sugar and the resulting Ethanol. And a kernel of rapeseed contains a hell of a lot more oil than a kernel of corn contains sugar.