Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Corn, Corn, Everywhere? But For How Long?

Farmers in the Midwest are enjoying a great corn harvest, they tell the Daily Reporter, feeding the ethanol boom, rising food prices and farm prosperity, too.

Not that I'm a glass-empty person, but you have to wonder where this is all headed, given that boom-and-bust has been seen in rural America before, and that even with sufficient rainfall, corn-growing and ethanol-making requires a lot of water and energy as inputs.

1 comment:

  1. I'd start to worry if I were you. I think that the ethanol mandates will be great for farmers in the short run, but an unsustainable disaster in the long. Its never a good idea to put your food in the gas tank. This will ripple well beyond the price of corn as more land is given over to feed the ethanol beast. Even further is that the rest of the world still counts on the US to be a bread basket, but what we once gave away will soon go into the tank too.

    I just wish I had the same pull with lawmakers as the ethanol lobby.

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