“Food grains are not used in ethanol production, only seed quality grains. Ethanol production has not affected food prices ...”
BS! What do you think beef, chickens, turkeys, etc eat?
Where the hell does corn grow? On rocky outcrops on the side of a mountain, or is it the same farmland used to grow other food crops?
BS! What do you think beef, chickens, turkeys, etc eat?
they eat the byproduct left over from ethanol or corn syrup production, same as they always have.
All increased ethanol production does is increase animal feed production.
Oh, and btw, corn isn't even a good "food" for humans. So quit the "it takes food from people" crap. You'd die if all you had to eat was corn, not that human type of corn is used in ethanol production.
Why? because the starch level is too low, that's why they use a hybrid corn, which isn't even digestible to humans, for ethanol production. The left over protien is then processed for animal feed, as it always has been for the past 100 years.
We are still paying farmers billions of dollars to not farm their land, to prevent massive over production which crashes the markets. Some 30 million acres are currently idled in this program.
Food price increases were caused by high petroleum prices plus they increase periodically anyway to account for inflation.
In fact there is another factor coming that will impact food markets significantly. Green Algae fuel production, a technology that is now maturing, produces the by product green algae pulp. This has been used for centuries as a high protein people food and animal feed additive, as a pharmaceutical and in industrial chemicals.
It is just starting to compete with corn for some of these markets.