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Some crops can require as much as 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy when one takes such things into account --- corn (well, maize) is quite calorie dense/efficient in terms of land and other usages --- I'd be curious to see a full, comprehensive crunching of the values involved.
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Well we are talking about ethanol production not corn for food. That is where the 1.3 ratio comes from. fuel input to fuel output.
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