Congratulations on your well above average yield.
Ethanol is a crap fuel that was forced on us with a created enforced market. Those two factors alone make it inconsequential to me but it has been great for farm economies, ADM, Cargill, John Deere and legions of others feeding at that trough. You didn’t mention cost of fertilizers to grow the corn since our soils are mostly just root anchors now or transportation.
As i recall, the last time ethanol was left to sink or swim on its own. It sank. I think I still have some worthless Farmer’s Coop bonds from at least one unprofitable misadventure of the 80s. Back then the country was littered with failed food to ethanol pie in the sky good time rock and roll plants. All this is simply anechdotal evidence to counter your assertion so it doesn’t count for much I suppose.
Somewhere I have a slide presentation though that pretty well hammers ethanol as a net loss based on more average yields and breakeven to the price of fossil fuels. It cant compete even if it is a btu break even. Oil has to be painfully expensive for ethanol to begin to compete as I recall. the evaluation was done by a chemical engineer and petroleum engineer at least 15 years ago. Based on that I’ve dismissed ethanol for a long time. Maybe there is some breakthrough I didn’t realize and our evaluation should be updated.
Ethanol is still a crap fuel forced on us by misdirected tre e huggers and self promoting special interests with huge conflicts of interest. On the basis of those two factors alo ne I would not burn the crap it it were free because of principals alone.
Run a loss/gain model on ethanol production from ground up and it’s a loss leader.