I come from a farm family.
Farmers produce that which gets them the largest profit.
In the sixties and early seventies we grew sugar beets. Then in the late 70s it became soy beans.
Now with the government pushing corn ethanol farmers are planting every field they can with Corn because that is the biggest profit maker. The problem with this is that the demand for corn by ethanol distillers is pricing (for now) cattle farmers out of the consumers of corn market. Eventually the price of meat will rise to the point that cattle farmers will again be able to sell meat at a profit. Unfortunately that price may well be above what the lower middle class can afford.
If the ethanol mandate goes away the price of corn will fall. With lower prices less corn will be grown but there will still be a demand for corn. The amount of corn grown will eventually fit the demand.
We must all remember that it is not only meat that will cost more there is also corn syrup, corn sugar and corn oil. Then there are of course all of the things made with these products.
Ethanol must die.
As I said, cattlemen who long for the days of cheap corn aren’t advocates of free market pricing, but rather for the subsidized production of cheap corn. If a cattleman built his business on the assumption that the government would guarantee him a perpetual supply of subsidized corn, and didn’t leave himself any sort of hedge, it’s his fault and not the corn farmers’. (similarly, if a corn farmer builds his business plan on the assumption that the government will guarantee perpetually high corn prices, without a hedge, it’s his own fault when he crashes)