why do people still believe ethanol is driving up the price of food.?
the price of corn has fallen 50% in the past 6 months, but food prices are basially at the same level. the truth and the facts are that the oil companies, the Grocers Manufacturers Association and environmentalists have paid millions of dollars to a lobbying group in washington to put bad publicity out about ethanol, biodiesel and most alternative fuels because the oil companies do not want the competition. the oil companies courted the GMA and environmentalists to help them get there lies to the public. corn grown for food is NOT bad for the environment. if it is we need to stop growing it for food for humans and livestock. the jobs that have been created, the equipment manufacturers that have been revived and the most important thing is that all the money generated IS STAYING IN OUR COUNTRY INSTEAD OF CONTINUING TO FLOW INTO OTHER COUNTRIES. when responding to this question, please don’t use the term, our land, our corn, because unless your paying the taxes or making land payments it’s not your land or your corn. farming has been accused of polluting the environment ever since tree huggers were born, we never hear about how much fertilizers, pesticides and soil from constuction the non farming community is contributing to the streams and rivers. this is my answer to my question, let me hear yours. please give me an answer that will tell me why it is better to send our money out of the USA than to try to continue to make our biofuels more efficient and actually try and produce something in the USA and not import everthing. the automobile industry is a perfect example of why we have got to support products manufactured in the USA or we’re all gonna end up working for china, japan, saudia arabia or some dictator.
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You make the case very well. As someone who has experience in both the oil industry and agriculture and ethanol I agree with most of what you say.
When oil and food were going up the groups you mentioned did not want to face the heat so they found a convenient scapegoat in ethanol. The truth is that ethanol actually kept the price of gasoline down from even higher levels and studies have shown that. Since the rising cost of oil had much more to do with rising food costs ethanol therefore actually helped keep food from rising even higher.
Also a major factor in rising food prices both in the grocery store and at your local restaurant was the increase in the minimum wage. This impacted grocery stores, restaurants and even the food processing plants and distributors. Most hourly workers in these industries saw pay increases even if they were already earning above minimum wage. The thing about this factor is that wages have not come down and with another wage hike coming watch for an increase in food costs both at the grocery store and restaurant.
Please understand I was not then and am not now against a minimum wage increase. The problem is we went way too long without raising it and then raised it too far too fast. This is the factor in our current economic situation that is being ignored. We could be at the same minimum wage by this Summer and would not have jolted our economy if that same increase had started 5 to 10 years earlier and been scaled up over that time period.
I predicted a severe recession the day the minimum wage increase was announced because I foresaw the shock it would have to our economy to have such a large wage increase in a relatively short period of time.
So blame high food prices on both the increasing minimum wage and rising oil prices and refuse to blame the smear campaign on ethanol.
Added: I am amazed at people who are totally ignorant about agriculture promulgate their opinions on this type of issue. Its as if people who had never piloted an airplane were trying to teach flying lessons.
i think you pretty much answered the question. i think lobbyists have really done a number here. i hear all kinds of storys about food price an protests overseas about using corn. ive heard that switch grass is more efficient anyway. the thing which you mentioned is that there is lots of money here and some people are trying to muddy the water. they should rot in a biofuel pit
dude, chill and use paragraphs.
Supply and demand coupled with a futures market is what makes corn go up, not lobbyist or whatever. The liberal dumbass news papers publish that a new bio fuels plant is going to be built and that the demand for corn will increase. Some farmer says to his broker, "Hey, I’ll sell my crop in the future because I think the price will go up." This takes 10,000 acres of corn off the market. The food buyer says there is less corn available, I’d better raise my asking price…..
So the cycle goes. Then, somebody looks and says, heck, the price of corn is to high I can’t sell it as ethanol, so they file for bankruptcy because they owe the bank money on the plant and they know they can’t sell the ethanol. The farmer reads this and calls his broker and says dump my corn now before the price drops because the ethanol plant quit buying.
Eventually, investors and farmers calm down and the market stabilizes. The amount of corn going to fuel drops back to where it was before the GW scare and only bumper crops of corn are sent to make ethanol, which is good because making ethanol assure that there is always some place to sell it and not waste it or dump the excess corn in the trash..
Corn prices drove up the price of food when gas price was high,
Ethonal production ties the price of corn to gas.
First off you need to learn what a paragraph is, its so hard to read what you wrote. for the biodiesel and ethanol fuel…who do you think is producing these alternative fuels?…the oil companies. BP and Exxon/Mobil have their own alt. fuel plants. So why would they try to give it bad publicity. Since cars can take in these fuels they will capitalize on it, there isnt any major competition.
It is a fact that corn is THE single WORSE crop for the land. It pulls the nutrients out of the soil the quickest and requires tons of water. That is why in the off season you will see clovers or beans being grown where corn used to be, they are Nitrogen fixers and return nurtients back to the soil. Corn crops are rotated yearly to prevent any major damage to the soil. I`m no tree hugger but thats botany and agriculture 101.
Well I just want to let you know that I am still paying twice what I was paying for a 40lb bag of corn at this time of year last year. So maybe across the country as a whole the price has dropped 50% but that doesn’t mean I see it. Just like they say price per gallon of gas is about $1.25 but I`m seeing it at $2. The price of corn skyrocketed, meaning the increase didn’t come a nickel or dime at a time, it was almost overnight. When demand goes up so does the price. Look at the price of corn oil…it hasnt doubled but it has increased at a rapid rate.
http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/item/18
there are many factors
crop loss.(temp increases)
GM seeds
Drought
Chinese buying big overseas
Ethanol production
Increase in transport costs
Increase in demand,http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf
Land loss because of
desertification
erosion
contaminated soils
even rising water in some places
What, isn’t Guiness a meal in a bottle?
you dont quite understand how the commodities market works do you? when you buy a contract, or an option, you buy it for future delivery. lets say you buy a contract now, you then choose your delivery month, say july delivery. as the commodity price changes, the companies like birds eye, and archer daniels midland, and others are also buying for delivery that month, as they are trying to set their contract price. now that corn you bought for july delivery price goes up, you sell the contract, and make money. that price then becomes the price that someone bought that corn at, and any products they make from that corn are going to be based on that prices
as the price changes in later months, usually down in some cases, and up in others, end user prices wont change until the lower priced stuff actually hits the market, usually 3-4 months down the road. companies still have to make money on what thay sell, and they cant do that if they keep changing the price everytime it changes in the market.
Without getting into whether you should use paragraphs or the cost of corn sold by the spot vs the futures market, we don’t need to use corn to make ethanol. We shouldn’t use anything that inefficient to make fuel, and whether the corn is fit for human consumption is unimportant since it does take acreage out of other food production either way. Better to plant corn and other crops on prime land and switchgrass for ethanol on marginal lands. We have a lot of such land that the USDA pays to keep out of production. Using algae to make ethanol is even better, one strain supposedly emits ethanol directly (in a gaseous state) so it requires no processing or harvesting at all and you can get 6,000 gallons of ethanol per year from one acre of the algae, compared to 370 gallons per acre of corn. And you’re not tying up farm land to make fuel.
Curious isn’t it? It seems like no one here is really answering your question. They are getting off on side issues. Yes, some of these very same people said that ethanol was causing food prices to go up less than one year ago. Now ethanol production is down, corn is way down in price and yet where is the benefit at your local grocery store? Kinda puzzling ain’t it!!!!