Wednesday, March 9, 2011

10 Economic Disaster Stories the Leftist Media is Hiding From You | NewsReal Blog

4). Four out of every ten rows of corn go to fuel production

The anti-human greens are starving the world with their policies and nowhere is this more apparent than in the amount of the world's corn that's being diverted into fuel production. The stark immorality of radical environmentalism is on full display when you understand how our push for "clean fuel" is literally starving poor people worldwide.

From WSJ:

In 2001, only 7% of U.S. corn went for ethanol, or about 707 million bushels. By 2010, the ethanol share was 39.4%, or nearly five billion bushels out of total U.S. production of 12.45 billion bushels. Four of every 10 rows of corn now go to produce fuel for American cars or trucks, not food or feed.

This trend is the deliberate result of policies designed to subsidize ethanol. Note the surge in the middle of the last decade when Congress began to legislate renewable fuel mandates and many states banned MTBE, which had competed with ethanol but ran afoul of the green and corn lobbies.

This carve out of nearly half of the U.S. corn corp to fuel is increasing even as global food supply is struggling to meet rising demand. U.S. farmers account for about 39% of global corn production and about 16% of that crop is exported, so U.S. corn stocks can influence the world price. Chicago Board of Trade corn March futures recently hit 30-month highs of $6.67 a bushel, up from $4 a bushel a year ago.

Demand from developing nations like China is also playing a role in rising prices, and in our view so is the loose monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve that has increased the price of nearly all commodities traded in dollars.

But reduced corn food supply undoubtedly matters. About 40% of U.S. corn production is used to produce feed for animals. As corn prices rise, beef, poultry and other prices rise, too. The price squeeze has already contributed to the bankruptcy of companies like Texas-based Pilgrim's Pride Corp. and Delaware-based poultry maker Townsends Inc. over the past few years.

This damage coincides with a growing consensus that ethanol achieves none of its alleged policy goals. Ethanol supporters claim the biofuel reduces U.S. dependence on foreign oil and provides a cleaner source of energy. But Cornell University scientist David Pimentel calculates that if the entire U.S. corn crop were devoted to ethanol production, it would satisfy only 4% of U.S. oil consumption.

In other words, a green pretension is making it more expensive for Americans to feed their families, destroying businesses, and starving people in the third world. The U.N. has already expressed concern about the ability of the world's poor to feed themselves due to high food prices, which I suppose is considered a small price to pay for "environmentally conscious" liberals.

Food riots have occurred with increasing frequency worldwide and rising food prices have played a role in the Middle East unrest. Yet the media continues to ignore the responsibility of silly and ineffective environmentalist policies in harming the ability of the poor to eat. It will take food riots here for the media to admit that using food as fuel is bad policy.



http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/09/10-economic-disaster-stories-the-leftist-media-is-hiding-from-you-1/5/