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Harvests of Russian wheat and Ukrainian corn set to hit recordsKYIV, Ukraine (MarketWatch) — Fueled by record harvests, Russia and Ukraine are expected to surge to the top ranks of the global export markets for wheat and corn in the coming years, a development that will open up new investment opportunities in commodities and equities. The surge in Russia, which will see its exports of wheat explode to more than 20 million metric tons this year from four million in the 2010-2011 year, is powered by robust production and inventory, rising global demand and lower domestic prices. Meanwhile, Ukraine will...

And they ignore their network's own role in forwarding the "Is Obama a Muslim?" question.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandated a steep rise in domestic ethanol production, is causing unforeseen negative consequences for food prices while failing to live up to the desired gasoline results and other expectations, concludes a Texas A&M University research team headed by an economics professor who studies energy issues.James Griffin James M. Griffin, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy, which is part of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Mauricio Cifuentes Soto, a graduate student assisting him, say in their report that the goal of...

The death of a man in Doddridge County has sparked a police investigation and troopers want you to be safe. A man in his 60's died this week at Ruby Memorial Hospital, supposedly after drinking poisoned moonshine he got in the county. Troopers say the unidentified man drank from a bottle of moonshine he got from a friend on Saturday night. He was flown to Ruby Memorial Hospital after what was believed to be stroke symptoms. He died at the hospital Tuesday. After testing and investigations, it was determined that the tainted moonshine shut down the man's internal organs. Troopers...

Evidence for Oldest Popcorn in South America Discovered Remy Melina, LiveScience Staff Writer Date: 20 January 2012 Time: 10:50 AM ET They may not have had television sets, but ancient Peruvians did share one part of our movie-watching culture: popcorn. Researchers have found evidence that societies living along the coast of Peru were eating the air-filled snack about 1,000 years earlier than previously estimated — even predating the use of ceramic pottery. Corn husks, stalks, cobs and tassels (pollen-producing flowers on corn) dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago were unearthed at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two sites on Peru's...

Energy Policy: Congress let the corn-based fuel's tax credits expire when it adjourned, but continuing mandates for its use means pump prices will go even higher and the money saved will be spent elsewhere. Subsidies for ethanol expired over the weekend, ironically just days before the Iowa caucuses. In their 33 years of existence, ethanol subsidies, the original poster child for crony capitalism, with an estimated cost of at least $45 billion and an annual price tag in recent years of $6 billion, have been a political sacred cow, letting farm state politicians bring home the bacon in exchange for...

The Iowa corn growers association released a report card today, rating Republican primary candidates on their support of "corn grower's legislative priorities." Candidates who oppose subsidies, like Representative Ron Paul and Herman Cain got "D." grades (Only their criticism of the EPA spared them "F"s. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich got the highest grade. He and President Obama were praised for their support of economically disastrous policies like ethanol subsidies.

Want to know something almost as scary as an Obama re-election?Many news sources have reported over the past couple of months how Monsanto Co., the world's biggest vegetable seed-maker, will begin selling biotech, or genetically engineered, sweet corn this fall for U.S. consumers.There are at least three alarming aspects to this particular veggie-gene mutation and its distribution.First, if you wonder why the sweet corn's genes are being triple-altered, wonder no more. Bloomberg reported that "the sweet corn seeds are engineered to kill insects living above and below ground and to tolerate applications of the company's Roundup herbicide, Consuelo Madere, Monsanto...

[snip] So the United States now imports ethanol from Brazil to meet the federal mandate for ethanol use, and yet those imports are subject to a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff to protect the U.S. domestic ethanol industry. Ethanol is also imported from Canada, which is not subject to a tariff, and owing to trade agreements and foreign policy considerations, the United States is committed to importing ethanol from all Caribbean Basin countries, with special set-asides for El Salvador and Costa Rica. Remember: Despite all this import and export activity, ethanol policy was justified on grounds of U.S. energy independence. Yet, just as...

News Release - National Academies: Ethanol Worsens Greenhouse Gases Published October 4, 2011 Washington, D.C. -- A new report by the National Academy of Sciences has found that corn ethanol production increases greenhouse gas emissions and damages soil, air, water and wildlife habitat. As well it says advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol are unlikely to prove practical substitutes for either corn ethanol or fossil fuels. “This report highlights the severe damage to the environment from corn-based ethanol,” said Sheila Karpf, EWG’s legislative and policy analyst. “It underscores just how misguided U.S. biofuels policy has become. It catalogs the environmentally...

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...