Call me Comrade

OK, since noon I've had about a case of beer, so take this in it's proper perspective... but Fidel Castro, the UN, and I have all said the same thing... that corn ethanol will lead to higher grain prices, and that will have world wide effects, most noticeably in food and feed grain prices.

U.N. official says bio fuels raise food supply risk

The problem is multifold. Corn raised for ethanol does not have to be the more expensive corn used for food, nor the more moderately priced corn used for feed grain. But the price per bushel for "corn" does not discriminate between the grade of corn. And since the price is so high it is encouraging growers of other, less profitable crops, to plant corn instead. This will increase the prices of the diverted crops, as well as the price of corn and corn based products. The range or corn based products is enormous, but if you include the pork, beef, and poultry raised on corn, and their byproducts of meats, gelatin, and dairy products, you can see how the prices of food will skyrocket. And the crops being diverted to ethanol corn include cotton, sugar beets, soya, wheat, and oats. This means those crops will also increase in price, affecting the end products of cereals, breads, sugar, baked goods, soda, and an endless list of food products.

But the UN is not concerned about the USA paying high prices for food. The UN is concerned that the 40% of the world's population that depends on the US for grains and milk will have to pay more. Most of the world that buys our feed grain, food grain, and dairy already pays more than they can, they certainly pay a larger percentage of their income than the US citizens do.
And Fidel Castro certainly does not care about how much the US has to pay. He is acting as Hugo Chavez' mouthpiece, who does not want the US, Brazil, and other South American countries to form an ethanol cartel to compete against OPEC. Not that Castro cares about OPEC, but he is in alliance with Russia, China and Venezuela, all who have similar, but differenting, reasons for being against ethanol. Russia and Venezuela because they have petroleum they want to sell, and China because they want to buy cheap grain and they are drilling for oil a few miles off the coast of the Florida Keys in Cuban waters.

I however, am also against corn ethanol, but the reasons are USA-centric. Food prices have already gone up, meat, dairy, cereal, poultry, soda, baked goods... virtually everything! Plus ethanol is not better for the environment. While it may reduce greenhouse gases at the tailpipe, it generates a lot at the distillery, not to mention that the exhaust exacerbates respiratory problems. Bio-diesel made from soya or peanut oil does not cause these problems but Americans have an unnatural aversion to driving a diesel powered car. But as one who also studied Africa and the starvation and atrocities that occur there I am also painfully aware that when US farmers divert crops from the food or feed chain it affects people worldwide.

Ethanol blog 5/27/07

Ethanol blog 5/30/07

Ethanol blog 6/12/07

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As an aside, have you any idea what it feels like to see that an issue you have supported for months is championed by Fidel Castro and the UN!!! Despite the public support by communists and socialists I still maintain that corn derived ethanol is a huge mistake and cellulose or sugar derived ethanol are better, and more efficient, alternatives.