Did a little checking on corn usage. Domestic crop in 2009 was 42% animal food, 10% human food (including a bit of beverage alcohol), 32% ethanol, and 16% exported. Not as much exported as I would have thought.
Don’t know how much of the ethanol corn is effectively recovered as animal food, but significant. This says to me that ethanol production is not a great factor in food prices at present.
It hasn't been, that is right. That is a piece of information that is hard to drive home on this forum. Everyone wants to believe that ethanol is bugaboo of food prices and it simply is not.