Requiem for Sanity

A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds. A bushel of corn makes 2.5 gallons of ethanol. It takes 10 bushels of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. The farmer gets $4 a bushel for his corn. That's $40 for just the corn to generate 25 gallons at $1.60 a gallon. Then there is the additional cost to distill, transport and dispense the ethanol. That will probably triple the cost to $4.80 a gallon costing $120 to fill the tank of an SUV.

A bushel of corn fed to cattle produces a little over 5 pounds of beef. The 10 bushels of corn used to make the 25 gallons of ethanol fuel takes 50 pounds of beef off the grocery store meat counter, thus causing a scarcity and driving up the cost of beef to the consumer. Where is the sanity of this? Are we crazy or what?