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Is there a coherent reason for your aversion? Why is burning crops for fuel bizarre? The diesel engine was originally designed to run on peanut and corn oil, so its certainly not something new.

Original peanut oil engine designs did not envision the requirements of the worldwide market for transportation fuels.

I'm averted to the idea of burning food for fuel because I don't like the idea of food pricing competing with other uses. The factors of food demand and costs (costs of farming and processing/distribution) generate food prices. But I have an ethical problem bidding up the price of food based on demand that does not involve *eating* the food, when it's on this kind of scale.

I've always been taught to not waste food and burning it in a Honda is a waste to me. Let's drill for more oil for that purpose until there's better options available.

Try runnning this defense of the status quo by the third world advocates at the Doha round who are demanding we stop subsidizing farmers and dumpiong the cheap produce on the world market. You will find they have a different take on it. I see the rising price of corn as a good thing. Some say cheap corn drove many Mexicans north.

Farmers exploit misunderstandings to the hilt. After massive PR about flood losses and disaster relief, one summer I was in the Des Moines airport and eavesdropping on the conversations of farmers leaving on vacations paid for by the guv. They were discusssing what prices they got for their stored grain. It sounded a lot like a wine conversation with years and moisture percentages cited. The guv doesn't know what it is doing. My bro married into an Iowa farm family. They declared and got paid for crop losses, but the corn actually went to Tyson's in Arkansas.

Corn price has been too low since the British passed the first corn laws in 1800 to subsidize English farmers threatened by surpluses from colonies. Higher prices will enable farmers to modernize their operations to meet demand. And please explain why a wild rainforest is better than a well managed plantation in Brazil or Indonesia. Both photosynthesize.

But I have an ethical problem bidding up the price of food based on demand that does not involve *eating* the food, when it's on this kind of scale.

I've always been taught to not waste food and burning it in a Honda is a waste to me.

I always been taught that its a waste to send money to Arab countries who want to kill you.

You'll have to excuse me if your ethical objection to biodiesel has no effect on me when I'm fueling up at the BioWillie.