Actually, any possible immorality of using corn to provide ethanol probably does not apply to sugar cane. Cane is grown in the field, shipped to the mill, where the sweet juice is extracted by running the stalks through heavy rollers under pressure. The juice is put through centrifuges where molasses leaks out and is recovered, leaving pure brown sugar.
The dried, inedible, squeezed-out cane stalks used to be regarded as waste. Back in the 1950's some sugar co's created a by-products division, using the dry stalks, known in the industry as "bagass", to produce chemicals to make nylon and artificial rubber. Today, I understand the emphasis is to use it to produce ethanol.
So the beauty of using cane rather than corn for ethanol is that with cane you first extract all the food value from the plant and use merely the waste for ethanol... or so I understand
