Cheap corn keeps ethanol producers from jumping on cheap sugar

In Washington, it appears that cheap corn has kept ethanol producers from jumping on the chance to get cheap sugar from the USDA’s feedstock flexibility program. In an attempt to stave off commodity loan defaults for sugar, the USDA bought quite a lot of the white stuff in order to boost the domestic sugar price above the loan default levels. The 2008 Farm Bill allows for the USDA to sell the sugar to ethanol producers at a hefty discount, but even then corn still seems to be a better deal thanks to the several byproducts and the related income streams that they allow.