alcohol

The E85 fuel that we use in the US contains 85% ethanol made from corn. Because of the increased demand for corn to make ethanol, the cost of corn has gone up. This is good for farmers, but bad for hungry people. Some friends of mine in Guatemala told me that the price of corn has doubled at the local markets over the last few years. And yesterday I read an article that said that US Food Aid is at an all time low because the money doesn't go as far, and a big part of this is due to corn being more expensive.
I support renewable energy, but corn isn't the way to go. Brazil seems to have it figured out: they make ethanol from sugarcane, and are almost self-sufficient when it comes to energy. It is considerably more efficient to make ethanol from sugar than corn, and if the price of sugar goes up, it's not the poor starving people who get hit. So why don't we use sugar in the US? The US has placed high tariffs on sugar imports, so it wouldn't be cost-effective to make ethanol from sugar in the US. I imagine that these tariffs are in place to encourage companies to use high-fructose corn syrup in their products instead of sugar, and since the farm lobby is so powerful, these tariffs probably won't get dropped anytime soon.