Goldemberg J. (2007). "Ethanol for a sustainable energy future". Science, Vol. 315. no. 5813, pp. 808 - 810, looks at the various renewable energy options, focusing particularly on ethanol produced from sugar cane in Brazil. It argues that sugar-derived ethanol is fully competitive with motor gasoline and appropriate for replication in many countries.
It also says that competition for land use between food and fuel in Brazil has not been substantial: sugarcane covers 10% of total cultivated land and 1% of total land available for agriculture in the country. It argues that expanding the Brazilian ethanol program by a factor of 10 (i.e. an additional 30 million hectares of sugarcane in Brazil and in other countries) would supply enough ethanol to replace 10% of the gasoline used in the world and that this would take up only a small fraction of the land available.
See here for a link to the article.
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