Perhaps if the land wasn't being planted with ethanol-corn, then some other crop could be planted that contributed more to human food supplies.
“ethanol corn” is nothing but field corn, the same corn used for animal feed, corn chips, tortillas, etc.
It isn’t “corn on the cob” corn.
Now, as to what else would be planted on that land? Most of the land cropped for corn that is converted to ethanol is in a corn-bean (where “bean” means soybeans) rotation. The land isn’t straight-cropped to corn year after year but in a very few places - a rotation is necessary for IPM.
About half of our bean crop is also used for animal feed and oilstock.
Indeed, I could have brought up that when “told” that the corn for ethanol is feed corn not sweet corn (I said edible, and feed corn is eaten by humans, just not as corn on the cob, but most likely as corn syrup or corn oil)- but of course your point is absolutely correct - if there was less demand for feed corn there would be more sweet corn planted.
If there was less demand for corn, more wheat (or soy, or whatever) would be planted.
But the point I was making is tangential to your point.
The sugar in the corn is turned to ethanol, and the distilled corn is not a complete waste, as it is then fed to pigs. Pigs LOVE corn starch in their diet! Humans do not eat the distilled corn with less starch, it would probably be a flavorless mess.
They’d plant corn, as they did before it was used for ethanol.
That’s because the original added-value ag was meat, and the govt set it up so the farmer would overproduce grain products, so in the end we’d have cheap, essentially subsidized meat, especially beef.
Meat in many ways is the older sister of ethanol.