I want to applaud the Indy Racing League for its decision two years ago to implement a plan to run its Honda engines on a 100-percent, Ethanol-based fuel, reducing the need for oil-based fuels in its now-very-popular racing series.
Ditto for the American Le Mans Series, where not only Ethanol is being promoted, the organization is encouraging teams to experiment with other forms of non-oil/gas-related fuels for competition consumption.
Indeed, this is progress...except for one thing.

According to the Washington Post, which conducted a nine-year investigation, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to the newspaper’s analysis of government records. Can you imagine if the government gave even a paltry $10 million to the IRL and ALMS to help in its study, use and implementation of alternative fuels?

Currently, the national media is frowning upon the use of corn for the production of fuels to run automobiles because of the current and/or coming food crisis. There’s already been a rationing of rice at Wal-Mart, a first in this writer’s recollection of life events. As for commodity prices, corn and rice have gone through the roof.
Thus, the old adages “you can’t see the forest for the trees” or “no matter what you do, it’s wrong” fits well in our current Ethanol plight, where daily barrages of  “news” now point to the fact that America may be “doing wrong” using its corn for people to drive cars and trucks instead of feeding the world.
OK, I’ll buy that argument to a degree if it weren’t for one big issue...government farm subsidies. Specifically, a “government farm subsidy” pays farmers to either grow or NOT grow a crop.
According to the Washington Post, which conducted a nine-year investigation, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to the newspaper’s analysis of government records. Can you imagine if the government gave even a paltry $10 million to the IRL and ALMS to help in its study, use and implementation of alternative fuels?
Additionally, instead of paying more to farmers in need, larger subsidy payments have gone to millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as real farmers.
Granted, most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, the Post said. Furthermore, farms are under no obligation to grow a crop that might be subsidized for “growing.” (Yes, it works both ways). Farmers can switch to a different crop, raise cattle or even grow Christmas trees — and still receive the government payments. The Post goes on to say that cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new backyards.
These subsidy payments account for half of the nation’s expanding agricultural-subsidy system, a complex web that the Washington Post says has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. Efforts to overhaul the farm subsidy network have been repeatedly thwarted by powerful farm-state lawmakers in Congress allied with agricultural interests, the Post reported.
So, before the IRL or ALMS gets an unfair bashing for using corn to run its race cars, let’s have a better understanding of what’s really going on. If it ever gets to the point where people in the U.S. are dying because we’re growing corn to drive cars on the street and track, I’ll be the first in line to support stopping the practice.
However, now is NOT the time to criticize auto racing and those who buy Ethanol for their highway vehicles to improve our current dependence on foreign oil.