Ethanol is a dead end.
Except for perhaps getting the opponents to REAL energy self-sufficiency into such a falling-down drunken stupor, that they mistakenly vote to lift the restrictions on energy extraction within our own borders. Like open up the coal reserves in the Escalante country in Utah, tap into the PROVEN and the potential reserves in the Alaskan North Slope and off our own coastal waters, including ANWR, begin extracting fissionable material to fuel the new technology that will be used in the nuclear power plants in this country, applying known and proven technology to dispose of the waste stream in this country (the Plasma trash reduction process), even going back and opening up old landfills to extract the methane that has been accumulating there.
And new sources of energy, most notably Methane Hydrate, would be collected from the base of the continential shelf that surrounds every land mass in the world. In fact, it may be to our advantage to harvest this accumulation of Methane Hydrate, to prevent its eructation under the influence of warming ocean currents reaching the depths where it is known to exist. This removal of a potential hazard, and harnessing it for use in the generation and distribution of energy may be the new frontier in the coming future of general prosperity.
Again, ethanol is not the way to go. It may bring some short-term prosperity to crop production, but at what cost? Reclamation of waste from farming operations, in the form of Thermal Depolymerizaton, may proved to be a better use of resources than continously mining the soil, to produce crops suitable for the production of ethanol.
Oh, please. Privately owned farmland in the US is far more fertile and productive today than it has ever been. There is a continuous trend of better yields with fewer energy and chemical inputs and that trend has been accelerating with the advance of plant genetics.