Ethanol corn uses farmland area the size of New York — could solar do it better?

9 comments

1. Hey, an example where Betteridge‘s law of headlines is wrong!

2. We’ve known this

3. [ Removed by Reddit ]

4. The sad part was is that it was ment to offset the cost of growing and selling corn as a byproduct. The problem is, farmer wanted more money so they grow it just to sell as Ethanol limiting food production that could’ve went to almost anything else. Allowing farmers to get access to solar and a bit of their land for wind would net them more money over all than corn growing would.

   With that said, I do wonder what affects that would have on the rest of the food if we dont need as much corn/heavy equipment anymore?

5. Honest question, what happens to all the CO2 produced during the fermentation of Ethanol?

6. Corn is just super inefficient solar 

   Counterexample to betteridge’s law

7. Anyone know the average annual profit yield per farmed acre of ethanol farmed corn?

8. It’s not solar vs farmland. We can make solar and agriculture work together more efficiently, but way more than 90% of farmland is lost to low density housing that can’t have dual use.

9. Yes it could, but would be politically untenable to replace all that cropland with solar farms. They will just repurpose it to make sustainable aviation fuel instead and keep the farmers happy.

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