87% of corn is not irrigated. Of the top irrigation states, only Nebraska is known for growing corn. Dry Nebraska used more irrigation water in 1980 before ethanol than after ethanol came to be. Corn ethanol is value-added product of already existing feed production acres which preserves the feed in a healthier and more productive form called distillers grain. I remember in the early1980s watching on TV that fusion was "right around the corner". At that time, I never knew about liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) or that Oak Ridge National Laboratory built and ran one in the late 60s/early 70s. The very inventor of our current solid fueled uranium reactors warned Congress that his design was too dangerous to use larger than ship sized. He advocated the very safe design of the LFTR for electricity production. LFTRs are walk away safe, not good for making weapons, make very little waste and the little waste it does produce is radioactive for only 300 years, use low pressures so can be made compact and very economically in factories, use an abundant fuel thorium which actually is a waste product of rare earth mineral mining, can even use radioactive waste from uranium reactors as fuel thus eliminating that problem, and run hot enough to very efficiently separate water into hydrogen and oxygen which can be combined with CO2 from seawater to make ethanol fuel. With enough ethanol, we could have hyper efficient ethanol optimized engines nearly pollution free with mileage greater than gasoline or even diesel engines. We could also have ethanol fuel cells with 50 times more energy density than lithium batteries (5 times more than hydrogen). European and Indian advanced large military submarines use ethanol fuel cells for propulsion. Can stay submerged for weeks.

@@danafletcher2341 Irrigated, shmirigated. It's taken out of the potable water supply no matter how you frame it. I think somewhere there's even a graph of how far the water has fallen in each state due to making ethanol from corn.

"Fazil Faruqui"

@@BerserkeR._. 🤔