farmers grow energy sugar beets which the North Dakota Renewable Energy Council claims have the "power to produce double the amount of ethanol in one acre when compared to corn." Also, in contrast to either sugarcane or beets, corn is a starch which must be converted to sugar in order to become a bio-fuel.  Sugarcane or beets don't need to undergo this process making it a much more efficient production process.  One study showed that in 2005 the cost of sugarcane ethanol in Brazil was 39 percent lower than for corn ethanol in the United States. Add to this the fact that sugarcane yields between 600-750 gallons of ethanol compared to 400 gallons for corn, and it is not hard to see why corn makes a great food for both humans and livestock, but is a disastrously inefficient fuel. And that is what government typically creates through attempts to intervene in markets.  Until this past year, tariffs on sugarcane ethanol combined with U.S. taxpayer subsidies for its production largely locked the import of the Brazilian bio-fuel out of the U.S. market.  Now, even with the tariffs dropped, Brazil is dealing with its own bureaucratic bungling and high taxes that are strangling ethanol production making any immediate impact of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol on the U.S. market unlikely. As an increasing amount of U.S. corn is being used to meet government mandated rising ethanol demand, the United States -- the world's dominant producer and exporter of corn -- is exporting less --