alt Hacker NewsAlgae needs solar light, so you will have to flood a lot of land to get enough.
Also, in case of a war or blockade you can switch the corn use from etanol to food. You will have to eat tortilla and polenta for a year [1] but it's better than algae from seawater or famine.
Here we use sugar cane to produce etanol, it's more efficient because it's a C4 plant. I guess it's possible in the south of the US.
[1] It's not so bad in my opinion if you can mix some meat in the sauce.
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>you can switch the corn use from etanol to food
Not that easily. Yellow dent corn is not edible without processing. So to switch that to food use you have to have factories to deal with it.
You'd be far better off taking the energy from panels and using it greenhouses to get human feed.
>Algae needs solar light, so you will have to flood a lot of land to get enough.
Algae is farmed at industrial scales in the ocean, today. Mostly in asia. US is very behind on this industry.