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[quote user="RRKen"][quote user="Bucyrus"]     Yes, but does what's left over provide higher feed nutrition per unit cost than the corn that went into it?  I understand your point about election year subterfuge, but this nutrition question should have an objective, food engineering answer.[/quote]DDGs values can change from plant to plant.   How long it was in the drier, percentage of wet stillage or syrup that went in per ton, and storage.  Some of the values are as follows, DDGs First, corn second:<ul><li>Average crude Protein content:  30%  - 9.5%</li><li>Crude fiber:   10% - 2.9%</li><li>Fat:     9% - 4.1%</li><li>Phosphorus:     1% - .31%</li><li>Sulfur:     .6% - .12%</li></ul>The difference however in this comparison is the digestibility and availability.  In DDGs, the digestibility is over 90% in all values, with 100% availability.  Whole grain corn does not have that.    There is variation between animal species.    The biggest difference in swine, is that the starch having been removed, the digestibility is lower.    On the plus side, recent projects such as is on-going in Mason Cityº, will allow oil to be extracted¹ from DDGs bringing about a  positive change to the nutritional values of DDGs.  I believe product flow, long a problem with shipping DDGs in covered hoppers, may also be improved.    Typically DDGs can be added to a diet of as high as 20% for beef and dairy, 10% for swine, and 5% for poultry.  For beef and dairy, higher percentages up to 45% can be wetcake.² The variability of quality from plant to plant is being overcome as livestock producers begin to find different results, and a wider choice of plants to choose from.  This has created competition, and forced the issue on the ethanol producer.³   º Golden Grain Energy LLC.  "This also has the potential to reduce VOC emissions, thereby reducing fuel consumption in the process, an added cost savings."¹ The extracted oil will add another revenue stream to ethanol production.  The more revenue streams you have, the more profitable the entire process becomes.² Purdue University study, 2006.³ Iowa State University, 2007.[/quote]Thanks for that information RRKen.  That does seem like an objective, food engineering answer to my question, and it seems like the answer is yes; there is more nutritional content in the ethanol DDG byproduct that there is in an equal quantity of corn.  But I think my question needs to be better focused in order to get closer to the cause and effect of rising food prices.  There is a cost to this DDG byproduct, but I guess that can be set aside as it pertains to the question about food prices.  I suppose the DDGs may be essentially free if ethanol is being produced.  There are arguments about the viability of ethanol, but that issue can be set aside too.This is how I would better frame my question:  When you turn corn into ethanol and create a byproduct that has a higher value as feed than corn, how much corn is consumed in the process to yield a ton of byproduct?  I assume that the corn input is greater than the yield of byproduct.  So the question is, when you produce a ton of byproduct is there more or less food value in that ton than there was in the quantity of corn that produced it?
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