"Sugar farming has been my whole life," said Michael Comb, 48, general
manager of the Louisiana Sugar Cane Cooperative in St. Martinville. "I
was 8 years old when I got on a tractor in a sugar field. It's all I
know."
As the article notes, sugar only grows in warm climates and in the US it only grows in southern Louisiana, the southernmost tip of Texas and parts of Florida. It certainly appears to me that not enough sugar can be grown in the US to have a meaningful impact on the ethanol market.
There's another issue that the article doesn't address: The European Union has already lost in the WTO for sugar export subsidies. Given the recent loss in the WTO on cotton subsidies and the fifty cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol, do they honestly think that this will pass muster?
Cross-posted at Beautiful Horizons