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.

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..

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.

Land loss because of
desertification
erosion
contaminated soils
even rising water in some places

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.