Mourdock is Right! Harold Smith 05/11/2012 @ 1:18pm I have seen this myth repeated several times before and again in this article. Mr Mourdock mentioned that corn ethanol costs more than gas. He is absolutely correct and Farm Bureau, once again is wrong. Not only that, Farm Bureau knows it and is once again trying to deceive the average person. Here is how the math works. As we all know, corn ethanol gets approx 2/3 the mileage of regular gasoline. So every gallon of ethanol should sell for 2/3 the price of a straight gallon of gasoline. But it does't! It's consistently more. Corn ethanol should be priced no higher than $2.66 a gallon to have the same mileage as gas. Furthermore, if we added up all the subsidies paid to the corn ethanol industry, including the subsidies on corn (over)production we would arrive at a true all-in cost to the taxpayer of $7-12 per gallon depending on which study you believe. So although corn ethanols nominal value is lower, its real cost is much, much higher than gasoline when adjusted for mileage. I didn't even add in the evironmental destruction that corn ethanol is causing as CRP acres (much of which is unfit to farm - think runoff) are converted to tillable as these rich farmers worship the almighty corn. If we accounted for all the extra environmental damage these farmers are causing via runoff, increased pesticide, insecticide, fertilizer, fungicide, corn on corn rotations and the like I have no idea what the true cost to society is? $15+/gallon true all-in societal cost for corn ethanol? Mourdock is absolutely right in his critique and I hope eventually Congress will pass a law making it illegal to burn up food to make fuel - its totally immoral. BTW, I am a farmer and landowner. It may not be popular to disagree with the agribusiness line, but as you can tell I feel strongly about this that the ag lobby has totally missed the boat in the pursuit of self-gain and profit regardless of cost or benefit to society.