Racefish’s Weblog

From the Washington Times:

“Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer yesterday said U.N. and other international aid officials are “flat-out wrong” to call U.S. ethanol production from corn a major factor in world food shortages and riots.”

“Only a very small portion of this problem is ethanol driven,” Mr. Schafer said in an interview with The Washington Times. Global food prices have risen 45 percent since mid-2007.”

“Mr. Schafer, a longtime proponent of biofuels, vehemently disputed efforts by the leaders of the World Bank and the U.N. World Food Program to blame ethanol for rising world food prices. He said his department calculates that competition between food and biofuels accounts only for up to 3 percent of food price increases.”

Now it’s understandable that the “World” is not entirely affected by our use of ethanol from corn, it is also a fact that the increasing use is directly affected by that use in our country.

The amount of land devoted to the production of corn has increased and the price of that product has gone up. This adversely affects the price of food in the U. S. How is that? Let me explain.

Prime beef is a corn fed product that commands more time and corn for production. The cost of feed corn goes up, the expense passed on to the farmer likewise increases. The price of beef has not gone up in proportion to corn. Why is that? Feeders are not keeping cattle in the feedlot for a longer time to get the market weight to the desired level. They are selling off early because they can’t afford to keep them. Consequently the cattle are dumped on the market early and the price may decline. Once the supply decreases to a certain point, the price will start to escalate in proportion to the corn price and become profitable again. Prices for pork and chicken will be similarly impacted.

Other products such as prepared foods dependent on corn starch, and corn syrup are going up now because the corn is being diverted to ethanol production. Sorry, but the cost of nachos at the football game will be higher.

Does using ethanol make sense? No. I conducted a test over the last two weeks as to the actual viability of the addition of ethanol to gasoline as a fuel. I had been running 10% ethanol as a matter of course as my “patriotic” duty to keep the import of foreign oil down. My mileage over a period of time was averaging 12.3 miles per gallon with the 10% blend. I then started using straight “regular” unleaded. I noticed an improvement of 13.4 miles per gallon during the period.

With the non-ethanol blend casting an additional $.10 per gallon, I crunched the numbers and lo and behold, the extra mileage more than made up for the extra cost. Does it make sense to keep burning your food? Not to me.