I take exception to the “food for fuel” notion.

Field corn is the predominant corn type grown in the U.S., and it is primarily used for animal feed. Currently, less than 10 percent of the U.S. field corn crop is used for direct domestic human consumption in corn-based foods such as corn meal, corn starch, and corn flakes, while the remainder is used for animal feed, exports, ethanol production, seed, and industrial uses. Sweet corn, both white and yellow, is usually consumed as immature whole-kernel corn by humans and also as an ingredient in other corn-based foods, but makes up only about 1 percent of total U.S. corn production.

Since U.S. ethanol production uses field corn, the most direct impact of increased ethanol production should be on field corn prices and on the price of food products based on field corn. However, even for those products heavily based on field corn, the effect of rising corn prices is dampened by other market factors. For example, an 18-ounce box of corn flakes contains about 12.9 ounces of milled field corn. When field corn is priced at $2.28 per bushel (the 20-year average), the actual value of corn represented in the box of corn flakes is about 3.3 cents (1 bushel = 56 pounds). (The remainder is packaging, processing, advertising, transportation, and other costs.) At $3.40 per bushel, the average price in 2007, the value is about 4.9 cents. The 49-percent increase in corn prices would be expected to raise the price of a box of corn flakes by about 1.6 cents, or 0.5 percent, assuming no other cost increases.

Source.
There will be plenty of corn for the cows, pigs, and chickens, as Canadian farmers are growing the grain, as well as U.S. farmers.
What is driving up food costs are fuel costs, from the farmer, the suppliers and distributors, to us.
The propaganda of “food for fuel” is an old one, promulgated by the Oil companies from the 1930’s until now, as well as any other criticism they could find.

Oil Industry Opposition to Ethyl Alcohol Fuel

The onset of interest in alcohol fuel in 1933 caught the oil industry off guard, but once alarmed, it reacted swiftly. The American Petroleum Institute urged formation of state level “emergency committees” in the spring of 1933 to oppose proposals for tax incentives. In a set of memos sent under a red cover marked “IMPORTANT,” API introduced a “coordinated program to be connected throughout the industry” to combat alcohol gasoline blending. The memo explained the threat: compulsory blend of alcohol and gasoline, as was used in France, Italy and Germany in the 1920s and early 30s, “will harm the petroleum industry and the automobile industry as well as state and national treasuries by reducing [oil] consumption,” the memo said. The only ones to benefit would be distillers, railroads (which would transport the alcohol) and bootleggers “to whom would be opened brand new fields of fraud.” 149

API’s campaign was waged across many states, especially the Midwest, in the spring of 1933, and at the federal level for most of the 1930s.150 Technical experts in the oil industry claimed that alcohol fuel blends “are definitely inferior to gasoline alone from every angle of motor performance.”151 Editorials by Lowell Thomas and other radio announcers paid for by oil industry sponsors claimed that alcohol fuel would make “speakeasys” out of gasoline stations because bootleggers could easily separate out the gasoline and sell the alcohol. Thomas said: “The automobile manufacturer resents it [alcohol ] because it interferes with the horsepower of the motorists car, requires extensive carburetor changes and presents other difficulties…” (In fact, this might be true of pure alcohol but not alcohol blends with gasoline).

Source.
I believe we need to use all resources, each and every one available, and those that are still in the dream stages.

Left by no2liberals on July 15th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

For years now, the Mexican government has bought up most of the corn that would go to food production and sold it to the bio fuel companies.
The poor in southern Mexico can no longer afford to buy what to them is a food staple.

Left by Anonymous on July 16th, 2008 at 7:30 am

Ethanol can come from other sources than corn.
Currently, we are in sugar glut, raw sugar is about twenty cents a pound, and one inventor has already developed a method for making cheap ethanol using sugar.
The continued development of cellulosic ethanol is important.
Government needs to get out of the way, or at least encourage, free market solutions to our fuel price problem. Ethanol, from any source, is a good fuel source, and has been since before gasoline was available. Price has always been the biggest factor in the success of gasoline over ethanol. Price now favors ethanol.

Left by no2liberals on July 16th, 2008 at 8:20 am

Everybody better think about how long and how much money it will take to convert everything that runs on oil, which is just about everything, to the alternate sources of energy whatever they are. We’re talking generations here, not years.

Left by dianne on July 16th, 2008 at 8:47 am

1. the transition past oil that he talks about, will be well on its way before all the wells we drilling even START to produce anything.
2. the world market by 2020 is going to be way more demanding than it is now. so by the time they are producing, prices will be way higher than now.
3. china is currently limiting its oil demand.
4. as safe as it is, the environment IS negatively impacted by drilling.
5. there are areas that could be drilled right now, which used to costs too much to make any money off of. now that prices are getting higher maybe they’ll start using what they already have access to.
6. and no one mentions the added refineries that will be need to process all this new oil. we have refineries now, that oil companies purposely run at less than full capacity to make more money from.

it is a terrible idea to drill now, and wasnt profitable to do in the past. so move on to better ways to make energy.

Left by scott k on July 17th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

*yawn*
Aggregate demand/aggregate supply.
Drill-Drill-Drill!

Left by no2liberals on July 18th, 2008 at 11:59 pm