Ethanol: just a way for the mega behemoth agro-businesses to get money?

Right? Using ethanol is not an efficient fuel, it costs too much to produce, both in farm equipment and in factory production, and it will affect food prices of wheat and other grains which would have been planted in the same fields:

In his Jan. 23 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for ramping up production of biofuels, such as ethanol from corn, to help cut U.S. dependency on foreign oil. A new report describes an ethanol-industry expansion already under way that is poised to boost corn-ethanol production by 160 percent within 2 years.

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The 116 existing U.S. ethanol-fuel distilleries now use 53 million tons of corn. The 90 distilleries under or planned for construction would boost that demand to 139 million metric tons of corn, half of the projected 2008 U.S. harvest.

U.S. farmers produce 40 percent of the world's corn and export 55 million tons. Brown argues that any change in the crop's availability for food and feed will propel world grain prices--including those of wheat and rice--"to levels never seen before," He explains, "These three crops compete for much of the same land."

This fact exposes the greed: Ethanol is supposed to help us ween ourselves off foreign oil and help fight global warming, right? Look at the reaction and the anger in Brazil. Only a few will get rich, and many will suffer.

And why on earth are we planning to run an ethanol plant on coal?:

The country is investing in ethanol not only as a way to reduce our reliance on oil, but as a way to reduce our greenhouse emissions and our overall emissions, said David Morris, a renewable energy specialist at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. I don't deny there is a savings for these ethanol plants using coal instead of natural gas. But at the same time, the country is providing an enormous incentive for making the ethanol in the first place.Until now, all 16 of Minnesota's corn-based ethanol plants were powered by natural gas. Currently, the most popular alternative for existing plants is generating heat with biomass, like plants in Little Falls, Winnebago and, soon, Benson.