This is strangling every American household through the higher prices paid at the market. Food is being expensively processed in order to be pumped into the car's fuel tank.
This makes about as much sense as anything else these liberal pansies have ordered us to do.
Air bags, seat belts, extra stop light in the rear, etc. etc.
The reason corn is used for ethanol is that it is cheap to produce and there is a lot of it. Since the early 1900s the US agricultural problem, with the exception of a very few years has been an excess production capacity. There are not enough paying customers for the product. The farmers can and generally do produce more grain than the world will buy. The precept ion of is that the last year or so has been an exception, however, the current price paid to the farmer indicates that is probably still true. Very few farmers sold grain at the high prices. The prices did not go up last year until well after the harvest when most farmers had sold theirs to avoid storage prices. The current prices are less than half the peak levels.
The ethanol plants that are squawking about high prices are those that bought high priced corn futures. If they could buy at current prices, they would be making out like bandits.
As land owner, as far as I can tell, the only current “government subsidy” we get seems to be on the mandated crop insurance. None on the production expenses and certainly none when we sell the grain.
As to the effect on store prices vs grain prices: When I was in high school & wheat was $2/bushel, the $ of wheat in a loaf of bread was $0.04. Do the math with the current five dollar wheat.
Also note that an individual farmer's cost of production has no real effect on the price he rec eaves for his product. He can only make a living when the market offers some value greater than the cost of his operation.
It is a bogus conclusion that higher food costs came from ethanol production. Most of the increased food cost is from $140 dollar a barrel petroleum. Some increase is a normal periodic price adjustment to keep up with inflation in general.
Americas farmers are producing all the food and all the corn for fuel that they can market profitably. As new markets open up our farmers have a vast capacity to increase production to meet any new demand.
Here is a PDF pointing out some Ethanol facts.
http://www.lecg.com/etea08
Cattle feed is cattle feed, and improved by the process.
I suppose that this means that we will soon be importing ethanol. Since many of the US ethanol plants have been going out of business in recent months there will be a shortage and we will need to burn someone else’s food in our gas tanks.
Liberals should leave the economy alone; all they ever do is screw it up with mandates.
Paul M. Weyrich — Luddite author of “The Population Bomb”.
Time to Zot.
Paul M. Weyrich is a nutcase owned by big oil. Let him publish who keeps him alive by donations. He would prefer we keep Arabs in charge of our destiny?