Buy Feed Corn: They’re about to stop making it… (grain-based biofuels alert)

321 Energy ^ | 7/26/2007 | F. William Engdahl

[Uncledave]

Putting aside the author's feelings about Bush and the politics of oil, some good points on grain-based ethanol here.

Only so much grain can be planted on so many acres, so one can't dispute this economic reality:

“We’re looking at competition in the global market between 800 million automobiles and the world’s two billion poorest people for the same commodity, the same grains. We are now in a new economic era where oil and food are interchangeable commodities because we can convert grain, sugar cane, soybeans—anything—into fuel for cars. In effect the price of oil is beginning to set the price of food.”

[Uncledave]

Renewable Energy Ping

Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off

[Mr. Jeeves]

It's amazing how many bought-and-paid-for politicians and economic pathologies ADM is behind - they aren't that big a company.

[Mr. Lucky]

What's really amazing is how little this guy knows about corn.

[L98Fiero]

I grew up in a farm community. Beans and cotton. All my life. I went back to visit last weekend and all I saw was dry corn.

We are starting our own demise with this nonsense. Burning food.

[Red Badger]

It’s already here. Local food prices (eggs,milk, cheese, pork,chicken, beef) are way UP, UP, UP!......

[VOA]

bump

[VOA]

bump

[traditional1]

The wacko's who also think "government-provided" means "free" and don't think of the taxpayers who they leech off of, also think that "BIG OIL" will somehow be stricken dead by government-subsidized and bio-fueled vehicles, where the savings on the non-oil fuel will be more than made up for in the prices of food, they think it's a "cheaper" clean alternative (whereas, the total energy to produce the alternative is more than current usage of energy without it.

Idiots never sleep.

[M203M4]

Shhh! Utopia is just a few tax increases, subsidies, and regulations away!

[o_zarkman44]

Ethanol is a much better regional energy supplement economically. National distribution may reduce any benefit because of transportation costs in my opinion. Good energy policy encourages regional optimization of available resources. What may be good in one region may not be so good elsewhere.

Oh and for that box of corn flakes being more expensive because of ethanol...... .

Kelloggs has been grossing over $280.00 a bushel selling boxes of corn flakes. The farmer has been grossing, on the average over the past 5 years, $2.20 a bushel for raw corn. One hell of a markup from producer to retail.

So the farmer has found a better market for his corn and Kelloggs no longer can set the price they will pay for corn because there is competition for the corn now.
Should we feel sorry for Kelloggs?? No.
Should we be happy for farmers? Yes. Perhaps this can reverse the trend of family farms disappearing by thousands every year. People need to get real about the cost of food. The markup is not from the producer. The markup comes with the finished product.
A few pennies a bushel more for a farmer does not translate into 10 or 15% price increases for product.
The substantial markup happens away from the farm.

[Bob Buchholz]

Remind me not to eat pasta at the author’s house.

[Camel Joe]

Don’t let them get their panties into too big a bunch, corn is only a stop gap bio-fuel source. Sweet potato crops that can be grown as far North as Canada will produce much more ethanol per acre than corn using chipping spud cultivation equipment that already exists will replace corn in short order. While I hate the name this site has some good info.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/tobacco_farmers.php

Also this study sheds some additional light.

www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1990/v1-260.html - 18k

[353FMG]

Very smart planning by our “leaders”. Perhaps they should be told that the people most duped by this whole “corn-for-ethanol” process are the poor. The grain growers are the real winners.

[Wonder Warthog]

"We are starting our own demise with this nonsense. Burning food."

I'm gonna say this for about the fifty-fith time. The net result of biofuel will be an INCREASE in overall food supply, and a decrease in food prices. All the "gloom and doom" idiots, like the author of this piece, fail to mention that only a part (roughly about 1/3) of biofuel production is converted into fuel (ethanol for corn, biodiesel for soybeans). For corn, the part removed is the carbohydrate fraction. For soybeans, the part removed is the oil fraction. In both cases, the leftover material IS FOOD, and will come into the food chain.

It may indeed be the case that we can't grow enough corn and soybeans to replace oil, but a net increase in food prices due to "burning food" will NOT take place.

[Howard Jarvis Admirer]

Very true. Another good side effect is that maybe they will start putting sugar back in sodas instead of HFCS (corn syrup).

[milwguy]

Blaming the President and Cheney for this? What about maybe portioning out a little blame to the enviro-wackos who gave us this Global Warming crap? What about the Dems in Congress who have not let us drill for oil in ANWR, the rest of Alaska and the outer continental shelf? Seems a little tin foil hattish to try to balme Bush/Cheney for this

[milwguy]

Blaming the President and Cheney for this? What about maybe portioning out a little blame to the enviro-wackos who gave us this Global Warming crap? What about the Dems in Congress who have not let us drill for oil in ANWR, the rest of Alaska and the outer continental shelf? Seems a little tin foil hattish to try to balme Bush/Cheney for this

[milwguy]

Blaming the President and Cheney for this? What about maybe portioning out a little blame to the enviro-wackos who gave us this Global Warming crap? What about the Dems in Congress who have not let us drill for oil in ANWR, the rest of Alaska and the outer continental shelf? Seems a little tin foil hattish to try to balme Bush/Cheney for this

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

Here is what confuses me.

For years, I have read that in the typical box of cereal the cost of the raw corn material is about the same as the cardboard. In other words, most of the cost is in processing, marketing and profit.

If this is still true, how can even a 100% increase in the price of food corn create a large increase in the cost of cereal.

Seems like an excuse to raise prices.