Because what is becoming obvious is that land that should be given to food production is now being diverted into the production of "bio-fuels" which is causing famine and suffering. Land is also being cleared to grow the crops. It is a classic case of "cash crop" syndrome. The more we push this way the worse the problem will become, expecially when the western nations (FAR more reliant upon cars etc than Brazil!) get involved.

The main concern is actually the way we live. In Brazil, most of the land is actually used for farming purposes, especially with sugar cane. In the United States however, the US is more concentrated on industrialization, where most of our working area fields concentrate more on industrialization, and modern technology. The concern is that if the US was to produce a greater corn supply, more land would have to be used. Much industrialized land would be needed to be converted into farmland. However, most of this land is either unsuitable for farming or the business refuses to sell that land. Basically, if the US were to concentrate more on corn supplies, then the US would convert into a less industrialized country and more of a farming settlement.

Ah my friend; which answer do you want? The conspiracy theory one, some left slanted gobbledy gook, right slanted gobbldygook, or an honest opinion. The conspiracy theory is that the oil companies, therefore the CIA need you to spend more on gas and petro-chemicals so they can tax the ____ out of you to finance their attempts to overthrow legal governments in the rest of the world. The far left side might read that George Bush needs your taxes to fund his oil war and allow him to retire early. The right wing answer might be that our military and transportation industries need to have perto-chemicals to keep everything balanced and running smoothly while we find an alternative source. My personal opinion is that more than one factor contributes to this slow transition. 1) We have a a lot of vehicles running on gas and diesel, we are slow to change, especially if we have to spend money to do it. 2)Factories in the states are generally not big on changing what they produce, or how they produce it without a sure profit. To make ethanol profitable, crude prices must remain closet to the record highs they are at now. 3) Part of the problem is the weakness of US currency, the dollar based system is making crude oil a good deal for other countries who convert their money to $$$ before spending it. 4) I believe the American public in general does not realize that this is not a temporary trend like it has been before, but a chance for the oil producing nations to help themselves to the cash-flow America produces. 5) other alt-fuels could be put in place more easily (or as easily) Methane for example could be produced from any bio-waste that is put into a methane digester and allowed to decay in an anaerobic (oxygen free) environment. 6) Political regulation makes it hard for any one as an individual to put in motion new ideas. Willie NElson, and some other people have begun project using used oils as fuel, but these are not sources available to most of us. In the final analysis, maybe taxes is the answer; our country will not develop any thing it can not tax....

Sorry Srs, my english is not good but I will try to explain my idea. The efficient to use corn to turn into ethanol is lower than sugar cane. For the other hand, the total sugar cane area in Brazil is around 1.5% of the total land destination do farm use. The Brazil dont't have problems with bioful x food. Further than, the emissions provide by ethanol is cleanly, it's good to combat of climate warm. It´s better USA import ethanol from Brazil than produce by corn.

Quite simple. There's too much money to be made from oil from fuel taxes and kickbacks from multi-trillion dollar oil companies. Also, contrary to popular belief, presidents and prime ministers don't actually run countries. They're really just patsies and puppets that dance to the beat of the drums played by mega billion dollar enterprises such as sheiks, oil barons and oil companies.

Good question.

I'm not sure about this but I think in a documentary I once saw they said there were negative impacts from the sugar cane growing/converting activities. To be checked though. And I'm sure it's safe to say that this (if true) isn't the reason why it's not being researched in other countries...

Brazil still produces about 12million barrels of oil a day. And even being the second largest producer of oil in South America, it still imports about 10million barrels a month.