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A Massachusetts family got the Halloween scare of a lifetime by getting lost inside a dark and creepy Salem-area corn maze and had to call 911 for rescue. Danvers police say they got a call of distress from a mother of two about 6:32 p.m. Monday. The woman alerted the 911 operator of their situation in the Connors Farm in Danvers, a short distance from Salem... He said a Danvers police with a tracking dog quickly plunged into the depths of the maze with a farm manager to search for the disoriented dad, mom and two young kids. Within a...

Should we use ethanol for fuel? Certainly. Should we use corn to make that ethanol? Certainly not. Sure, we want to get over our need for foreign oil. Sure, we want to find a renewable fuel for our vehicles. Sure, ethanol could work just fine. But don’t make it from corn. Here’s what I’m talking about. The president and a bunch of powerful people in Congress have been working over recent years to hold up corn-based ethanol as the answer to our future energy-supply needs. When he talks about it, the president says corn-based ethanol is our only hope of...

High energy prices and bad weather -- including blistering hot temperatures, flooding in some places and drought in others -- hurt this year’s agricultural output. But farmers agree that a major problem is the soaring price of corn, which is used directly in products like cereal, and indirectly as livestock feed. Corn is nearly twice as expensive now as it was last summer -- even though US farmers planted the second-largest crop since World War II. Why? Well, 40 percent of the crop goes to produce 12.6 billion gallons of ethanol to meet the government’s renewable fuel standards. In other...

Why Food For Fuel Is A Terrible Idea By Jonathan Chen Benzinga Staff Writer September 02, 2011 12:17 PM Pretty soon, corn will be more valuable than a barrel of oil. There is an article on Bloomberg Government from last month that still holds true today. (Gasp! Something written more than 30 seconds ago still holds true?) It is a sad fact that the U.S. is using corn almost as much as Saudi oil as fuel in this country. The "food for fuel" idea has been around for a long time, and it has been seen as a bailout of...

Hedge Higher Food Prices By Investing In Corn Commodities / Agricultural Commodities Aug 25, 2011 - 06:55 AM By: Money Morning David Zeiler writes: A smaller-than-expected U.S. fall harvest, combined with strong demand, has sown the seeds of higher corn market prices. That will inflate your grocery bill, but it's also an investing opportunity that should persist into next year according to some experts. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently reduced its forecast for the fall corn crop to 12.9 billion bushels from 13.5 billion based on damage from spring flooding and summer drought in several key corn-producing...

China's struggle to meet the growing demands of its middle class is fueling a sudden surge in demand for corn, sending vast ripples across the U.S. farm belt and potentially upending the grain's trade flows around the world. China's need for corn—which forms the basis of sweeteners, starch and alcohol as well as feed for livestock—was on stark display in July when the nation ordered 21 million bushels of U.S. corn in one hit, more than the U.S. government thought the country would buy in a year. The purchase surprised the market and came as an intense July heat wave...

U.S. corn planted area for all purposes in 2011 is estimated at 92.3 million acres, up 5% from 2010 and the second-highest planted acreage since 1944, behind only the 93.5 million acres planted in 2007...(snip) USDA numbers have sent corn futures, which were previously working on the prediction that inclement weather had limited corn farmers to 90.7 million acres of planting, dropping significantly.

Robert Rapier invests a lot of effort in an attempt to discover what is going on with USDA reports of improving ethanol EROEI. The USDA is obviously being hammered by congress to make their giveaways to corn growers look less stupid. My bottom line is this: 1. USDA is obviously under pressure to fiddle their accounting to make subsidized corn ethanol look as good as possible.2. Some of the tricks are just laughable, like subtracting byproducts from the inputs to form a new “input” definition that obviously inflates the “return” = output/”input”. Wouldn’t it be nice if our investment returns...

Pixar Animation mastermind John Lasseter says the company has no environmental agenda, but with "Cars 2," the blockbuster outfit does tap into today's eco-mindedness with a plot driven by oil vs. a cleaner alternative. Debuting in U.S. theaters Friday, "Cars 2" sends race car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) on a World Grand Prix circuit whose organizer fuels the vehicles with a green alternative called Allinol, prompting the bad guys to try to discredit the new power supply that threatens traditional gasoline.

Reports from the WTO and USDA show that corn supplies are influenced by biofuel subsidies and mandates. The biofuels industry is being blamed for record food prices and high price volatility. Earlier this month a report from the World Trade Organization and other international agencies recommended that governments cut support for biofuels to ease that volatility. On the heels of that report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued its corn forecast; it suggested that corn supplies will be very tight this year because bad weather has limited planting and because the share of corn going to ethanol is increasing. After...

Last week, the Senate finally overcame the entrenched and powerful ethanol special interest group to eliminate $6 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies. This historic vote just might signal that a new era of fiscal responsibility is possible and give hope to a worried nation that Washington can confront national problems. After the first, early Allied success during WWII, Winston Churchill famously declared that "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end--But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning". Could the Senate vote on killing of one of the most expensive and irresponsible taxpayer...

Subsidies for ethanol are being put to the test again in the Senate Thursday, as budget cutters try to demonstrate a growing appetite in Congress to end special interest tax breaks to help reduce government borrowing. The Senate is scheduled to vote on two measures that would end subsidies for producing ethanol, a renewable, liquid fuel additive that comes mainly from corn in the U.S. One measure would repeal a $5 billion annual tax credit that provides 45 cents a gallon to oil refiners who mix ethanol with gasoline. The Senate rejected an identical measure Tuesday, 40-59, though some senators...

Senate Democrats are making hay today with yesterdays' vote by a majority of Senate Republicans to repeal the tax credit for ethanol in defiance of Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge." Here's the e-mail blast from Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez, with a conference call coming: "In Watershed Moment, 34 Senate Republicans Broke With Right Wing Ideology Yesterday -- Vote Means Tax Expenditures Now Fair Game To Reduce Deficit...Schumer, Menendez to Call Yesterday’s Vote 'Sea Change' That Will Boost Movement to Finally End Wasteful Oil and Gas Subsidies." They are correct. The vote breaks GOP orthodoxy that for decades has pretended...

Subsidies: How is it that the party loudly proclaiming how the government shouldn't "pick winners and losers" could only manage to get 34 senators to oppose one of the most egregious examples of federal industrial policy? On Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment sponsored by Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to end the $6 billion in tax subsidies plus the import tariffs that have given rise to Big Ethanol. The measure got just 40 votes, six of them from Democrats. The picture doesn't get much better at the GOP presidential candidate level, where for every critic of the subsidy there's a Newt...

WASHINGTON – The Senate refused to kill a $5 billion annual subsidy for ethanol on Tuesday, backing continued government aid for a Farm Belt-based industry over deficit reduction in an era of record red ink. The 40-59 vote, far short of the 60 needed to advance the measure, reflected regional as well as partisan differences, a split among Republicans — and anything but the final word on the issue. "We continue to spend money that we don't have on things that we don't need," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a prominent deficit hawk who led the effort to eliminate the...

By mandating 40% of our corn crop be dedicated to ethanol, we've created domestic shortages that may turn the U.S. into a net importer of corn and destroy our dominance in one more area of the world economy. [...] We are now reaping the unintended consequences of those decisions. Accepting as fact that American farmers are the most productive in the world, and also accepting as fact that the agriculture sector is one of the few sectors of the economy which is performing well, we’re still faced with a problem. Coming off the third-highest corn harvest in U.S. history in...

FREDERICK, MD - One local industry that is peaking during this down economy is field corn. According to the Maryland Office of Economic Development, the price of a bushel of the cash crop is the highest its ever been. Eddie Mercer's 4,500 acre farm has been his livelihood for nearly 45 years and he says he has never seen the price of corn reach this level. "This is the ultimate high," says Eddie Mercer, President and Owner of Eddie Mercer Agri-Services Inc. "The most time we've ever sold corn is maybe in the $5, but never in the $8 range."...

Anyone looking forward to corn on the cob slathered with butter this summer may find that it has become an expensive part of their diet. Or it not be available at all.

Obesity and diabetes rates continue to rise despite decline in consumption of sweetenersWASHINGTON – A comprehensive review of research focusing on the debate between High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and other sweeteners presented today finds there is no evidence of any significant variation in the way the human body metabolizes HFCS as opposed to standard table sugar, or any difference in impact on risk factors for chronic disease. James M. Rippe, MD, founder and director of the Rippe Lifestyle Institute and professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Central Florida, presented a summary of recent research entitled -- "High...

Why Corn Is Suddenly The Hottest Commodity In The World Joe Weisenthal May 18, 2011, 4:30 PM In case you don't watch such things, the price of corn has been soaring of late. It's the hottest commodity around. Here's a chart: What's behind the gigantic move? Basically, weather and the fact that corn plantings for the year are WAY slower than estimated, and way behind historical pace. As this chart from Morgan Stanley shows, the amount of available stocks to use has hit a record low. And here you can see how behind corn planting is this year. Image: Morgan...