A lot of people place much of the blame for rising food prices on the increased production of ethanol. The simplistic and, I believe, wrong argument is that diverting so much planted corn to ethanol is taking away from the food supply.
Its an argument the big oil industry wants you to believe.
I found it interesting yesterday to read an Associated Press story with the headline, Midwest floods may not help hike cost of food.
The storys premise was that because farmers planted more corn than expected this spring, there should be enough left that survived the flood to leave a minimal effect on food inflation.
Farmers will harvest nearly 9 percent fewer acres of corn this year than last year, in part because of Midwest flooding, the USDA reported. But farmers also planted more than a million additional acres of corn than they had expected to in March, which may remove some of the inflation potential out of the floods, the AP reported.
Interestingly, corn futures prices fell in the wake of the USDA report.
But I bet you wont hear many thanks to the ethanol industry for indirectly softening the blow.
Were testing our third comic strip this week, The Pajama Diaries. We previously tested Crankshaft and DeFlocked as potential replacements of the Kim and Jason comic, which no longer is being done as a new strip. Take a look at Pajama Diaries in todays paper, and register your vote online.
After Diaries, we have three more comics to test for two weeks each before revealing which strip we will run as a permanent replacement.
Speaking of comics, I have some news about For Better or For Worse. Check back here tomorrow.
Its an argument the big oil industry wants you to believe.
I found it interesting yesterday to read an Associated Press story with the headline, Midwest floods may not help hike cost of food.
The storys premise was that because farmers planted more corn than expected this spring, there should be enough left that survived the flood to leave a minimal effect on food inflation.
Farmers will harvest nearly 9 percent fewer acres of corn this year than last year, in part because of Midwest flooding, the USDA reported. But farmers also planted more than a million additional acres of corn than they had expected to in March, which may remove some of the inflation potential out of the floods, the AP reported.
Interestingly, corn futures prices fell in the wake of the USDA report.
But I bet you wont hear many thanks to the ethanol industry for indirectly softening the blow.
Were testing our third comic strip this week, The Pajama Diaries. We previously tested Crankshaft and DeFlocked as potential replacements of the Kim and Jason comic, which no longer is being done as a new strip. Take a look at Pajama Diaries in todays paper, and register your vote online.
After Diaries, we have three more comics to test for two weeks each before revealing which strip we will run as a permanent replacement.
Speaking of comics, I have some news about For Better or For Worse. Check back here tomorrow.
