Ok. I’m a girl and don’t understand most of this but, is this going to do for all food prices what ethanol did for corn? Farmers in my area are scrambling for corn to feed their cows.
Using food is stupid. Why not use crops like tobacco. The tobacco farmers would love it, tobacco grows anywhere, and with the cigarette industry in decline, the tobacco has to go to something. The example given in the article discussed using wood pulp.
Oil is just carbon. Carbon is in every living thing. You can probably get oil from any thing that breathes or swims or photosynthesizes. There is NO reason to burn our food. We can find a fast growing weed and use it to make oil. With genetic modification, we can start with a plant that is a rich base for making oil and improve its natural characteristics.
This isn’t rocket science. There is no reason to use corn except that the greedy corn lobby wanted to profit from it. Some sources yield more oil than others, take more energy to produce or cost more to make the oil, and that is part of the equation, but there is NO technical reason to burn our food to fuel our cars. No reason.