I've heard that ethanol production actually uses more fuel than it produces, so you'd be better off just not producing it and using the fuel directly.
On the other hand, it allows oil companies to pretend they're doing something about climate change (without changing any of their infrastructure) and it gives farmers more money, so you'd have to take on the oil lobby AND the farming lobby to get rid of it.
The "uses more fuel than it produces" argument is a bit of a red herring. Gasoline also "uses more fuel than it produces", because it takes a substantial amount of fuel to bring one gallon of gas out of the ground, refine it, and truck it out to the pump.
Can you expand on this claim? I figure there is some word play here around 'gasoline' and 'fuel' definitions, otherwise logic dictates this doesn't meet basic logic. E.g. diesel isn't included in gasoline but is in fuel used to power trucks/machines etc. I'm curious if this is an interesting fact, or wordplay to make something sound interesting.
Diesel engines originally were developed to burn peanut oil. So lets run the peanut farm on locally grown peanut oil.
Lets say the tractors and trucks take 100 barrels of peanut oil per year to run. Oh fertilizers and poisons and all that petroleum derived stuff take oil too, but whatever, we'll imagine the total energy cost of running a farm is 100 barrel equivalent of peanut oil. Sure some of the 100 barrels equivalent is the UPS dude pumping diesel into his brown truck to drive out and drop off your herbicide or seed or whatever. And the power plant is shoveling some energy in the form of coal to make the electricity to run the irrigation pumps. Still, ignore the details and stick with me on the big pix, "doing farmin for a year" takes 100 barrels of energy.
If your farm averages 101 or more barrels of peanut oil production, you win, and get to sell at least 1 barrel a year (or more) for profit, or more likely debt service and taxes, whatever. At least next year on average you'll have a stockpile of 100 barrels needed to run the farm next year. You have a magic perpetual motion machine that turns sunlight into a trickle of peanut oil as long as the soil doesn't wash away and the sun keeps on shining. Cool.
If your farm averages 99 or fewer barrels of peanut oil production per year, then aside from massive government intervention you'll never get to sell any peanut oil on the open market, and even worse, you'll have to buy at least 1 barrel per year of crude oil to continue to operate your farm. This farm eats oil well pumped crude oil and outputs, well, nothing at all, at least without massive central government control and regulation and subsidy, like having the .gov take my money at gunpoint to give you 50 barrels of crude oil in exchange for votes so you can sell 40 barrels of peanut oil to greenwash the market.
Guess which scenario describes actual ethanol operations? We would net conserve crude petroleum if we shut down ethanol production today. This would eliminate uncountable government provided socialized jobs, so you can guess the likelihood of that ever happening.
On the other hand, it allows oil companies to pretend they're doing something about climate change (without changing any of their infrastructure) and it gives farmers more money, so you'd have to take on the oil lobby AND the farming lobby to get rid of it.