This is pretty basic; no offense, but I am always amazed at the lack of knowledge about agriculture!
Corn that people eat directly (lets call it sweet corn); corn on the cob, canned corn, etc; is a TINY amount of acreage and is a totally different (family) type of corn. Sweet corn production really has no relationship to field corn. Other than looking kind of the same (it is shorter).
Field corn is the mast majority of corn grown in the US and the world and is what goes into ethanol production. I suppose it could be eaten fresh (on the cob) but it wouldn't have much taste. It matures and fills the kernal and then dents and dries down so it can be harvested with a combine. The cobs and husks are left in the field.
Field corn can go to a ethanol plant; or be run through a feed mill. A feed mill would grind it kind of like corn meal. Then mineral and vitamins would be added as well as a protein supplement (most often soybean meal) Soybean meal is produced after the oil is extracted from soybeans, and the soybeans are ground to the proper consistency. The mixture is different depending on what animals you are feeding.
Cattle and dairy cows would also be getting a roughage added (hay or some other fibrous material)
When the corn is run through an ethanol plant; there is a substantial part of the nutrients left called dried distillers grains (DDG). DDG is a high quality feed that works well in livestock production. The DDG are high in protein and can partially substitute for soybean meal.
But a percentage of the kernel is consumed for the ethanol. That percentage of the kernel would have made good livestock feed if it had been fed directly to livestock (cattle, chickens (eggs and meat), pigs or dairy).
I should know the numbers on that; but I don't have it in front of me.
So bottom line line is that ethanol production probably isn't the best thing for us to be doing. But it is not as bad a thing as some people say it is. It is also not as good a thing as some say!
I say get rid of any governmental incentives to use it and let the market place decide.
Is that what some people call "Shell corn"?
It would be best to let the market decide. I understand that the kind of corn that's planted is not what people would like to eat themselves. Then again, if there's less of a market for it, then farmers would plant something else.
The big thing that concerns me is that the price of food looks like it will go up. This will not be a crisis for me personally -- if the price of food doubled, we would wind up eating less steak and more chicken, but we would get by. The people in the Third World, however, who barely make enough to buy even cheap food, would be in deep trouble.
thanks for the very informative post!