I agree with all those points. All I'm saying is that if you argue that using corn ethanol as fuel is bad because it's "burning food", then you have to confront all the other ways in which the agricultural system is not really about making food.
Additionally, sugarcane-derived ethanol is far more efficient than the corn-based stuff we use in the US. I've seen numbers ranging from 3x to more than 7x more efficient than corn-based ethanol, which would mean that the use of ethanol could actually be a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, unlike what we get from using corn.
No reason to demonize sustainable, renewable fuel - instead, we should look at the agriculture subsidies that "protect our farmers" and see how they're hurting everyone (including the farmers, affected arguably more than the rest of us by global warming) in the long run.
Ag subsidies seem to mainly stabilize price regimes. There would arguably be costs associated with increased risk of production if the subsidies were not in place.
They might be obsolete, but the fraction of people's time spent on food (both as producers and consumers ) continues to decline. It's also argued that the availability of abundant food is a legitimate public good.
Our levels of food security in the First World are recent. I doubt anyone from... say, 1850 would put food security in terms of a human right as we now do.
The irony is that petroleum products are an input into ethanol-corn production. How much I don't know; but the present subsidy regime nearly guarantees some measure of overproduction.
