Biofuel Backlash

A positively devastating indictment of corn ethanol in today’s Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/page/opinion.html). I’ll get lots of grief for putting this up like I always do when I cross my friends here in the corn belt, but I simply can’t help myself. Raw ingredient prices (especially flour, butter and milk) are simply too high. There are other factors playing into the global food crisis, obviously, including the recent Australian drought and increasing demand from consumers in places like China and India. However ethanol is a big part of the problem, and is set to become an even bigger one as federally-mandated ethanol purchases increase (as current law dictates) over the next 12 years. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I want farmers to make money, and indeed it seems to me that the demand for corn, even without ethanol, is pretty good. Can’t we do without this artificial fuel bubble?