for the original poster....if you are looking for performance as defined by what you sense in your seat..HP/torque, then the octane rating of ethanol based 'regular' fuel is identical to what is required by your engine....ergo..all things else being equal, you wouldn't know one type of fuel from another. More performance starts first with more air, then match the fuel to get the ratio necessary.
I'm more concerned with miles/gallon and less moisture in my tank.
You might get 3% less fuel economy which works out to around 1.2 miles per gallon. Little performance difference as stated by Muckinfuss. If you run the bike regularly moisture should not be an issue. If you worry about it just drain your tank a few times a year to get any small amount of water out.....if you store it just drain the tank and fog it.
Seems a small price to pay for more energy independence and keeping the money here at home instead of in Riyadh.
You see nothing wrong with using vast tracts of land to grow corn instead of real nutritional food..? No matter what spin you put on it, growing food for fuel is about the stupidest idea on the planet, especially when you look at the fact that ethanol can be made from virtually anything including the grass clippings from your back yard. You sound like an advocate of the corn/ethanol industry, which really surprises me Steve, ethanol is a #$%* fuel substitute and creates more problems than it solves until vehicles are purpose built to run on alcohol and even then problems will exist, just ask the drag racing community that use alcohol fuels, they flush the system completely out after every race meeting to stop corrosion. You need to burn 1.4L of ethanol to achieve the same amount of energy as burning 1L of pure petrol, far more than the 3% you quoted, for example, e85 has 33% less energy than petrol and 10% inefficiencies are reported constantly for 10% ethanol blends so i'm not sure where you are getting your facts, as more ethanol is added the efficiency goes way down, not to mention its subsidized to hell. Ethanol creates almost exactly the same amount of CO2 as fuel when the efficiency of the fuel is taken into consideration, so its not as clean and green as most will have you believe, the claims are made due to the corn absorbing CO2 as it grows which allows them to give it a more neutral rating as the CO2 is offset on the farm, juggling figures as usual. Corn is also one of the lest efficient ways of making ethanol, what ever lobby that hounds your governments for market availability of corn is doing a great job but it will disappear just as quick as it started.. 
Moisture will ALWAYS be an issue with ethanol, as soon as you have alcohol in your fuel it is absorbing moisture and that moisture condensates and sits on the top of the inside of the tank and its not too hard to work out what happens then, to say otherwise is bullsh1t, not to mention what it eventually does to all the rubber parts in its way and the washing effect it has on cylinder walls leading to faster wearing engines, Car manufacturers have said they will refuse to honor warranties on cars using E15 so thats got to tell you something you would think...
As someone who grew up on a farm and has direct connections to the midwest farm economy my whole life I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. I don't think you really know anything about the farm economy here. Do you think they can just stop growing corn and soybeans to grow "real nutritional food". The climate, soil, harvesting, marketing, storage, and transport infrastructure is set up for these crops. They are the most economically viable crops to grow here on the vast scale required....that's why they call it The Corn Belt. When I was a kid we grew corn and soybeans....40 years later we still grow....you guessed it... corn and soybeans.
The farmers will grow what gives the best return for their effort and investment. The market is there for the product...it has to be grown somewhere...it grows best here...makes sense to me. As stated previously, maybe you did not read it, there is no shortage of corn products for the food industry. Farmers are increasing their yields to compensate. The majority of the corn crop is still used for livestock feed with about 22-25% used for ethanol production. Corn ethanol production is capped by law at 15 billion gallons as that level is enough for current usage.
There is no global shortage of food. The problem is transportation, storage, unequal distribution, and political and economic factors. Growing more "real nutritional food" in the Midwest will not solve those issues.
To answer some of your other points. Sure corn is not the most efficient crop for ethanol...probably sugar cane is but we can't grow sugar cane here so we use what grows best here....corn. Cellulosic feedstock may eventually replace corn to some degree but the technology is still being developed. Advocate for the ethanol industry...no, just an advocate for the midwest farm economy like I said earlier. I suppose I could throw it back at you and say you sound like an advocate for Big Oil. All the controversial issues associated with ethanol pale in comparison to the issues with oil production. As stated earlier : How much blood and treasure is spent to keep the oil spigot flowing in that part of the world. How many of our service personnel ever died for ethanol? Do you ever factor in that cost? What about the environmental cost of oil production......Ixtoc 1, Bluewater Horizon, Exxon Valdez, Amoco Cadiz, Torrey Canyon, Lac-Magantic Quebec, .....etc. And now fracking...who knows what that may lead to. The worry about the effect of alcohol on moisture, rubber, drag racing, and cylinder walls doesn't seem all that important.
The 3% figure comes from fuel efficiency standards published by the EPA and is for E10 which is what is available here. I could care less what drag racers do as we don't run our cars at WOT in 1/4 mile increments on pure alcohol.
I am going to the farm in late September for the weekend so I will check with Tom about growing something more edible next year. Maybe he will let me drive the tractor...been a long time.
