Corn soars to record high, set to climb further

My step daughter works in research for a seed company. The goal is to plant stronger, healthier, high yield corn and beans. More food and fuel per acre. That will benefit all of us.

Bonnie, that will benefit us all but it is a bit too little too late for right now. This years corn crop is headed toward disaster conditions due to the unusually heavy rains and floods in the planting season and in many places like some here in the midwest farmers are about to lose their second planting to the rains. Only due to past increases in yields per acre have farmers been able to stay afloat because they got so little for their grain.

Like was said the pressure placed on corn crops for feed, food and now fuel this year with a certain shortage is going to send corn prices skyward this year.

I guess the price of everything is going to go up now.

Well with the nations farmland flooded, this doesn't surprise me.

Good point, James!

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I really don't understand people who say using corn for fuel is reprehensible.

Is it really any better to use barley and rice to make beer?

Is it any better to use wheat to make vodka and gin?

Michael, I don't feel using corn for fuel is reprehensible it is simply not an intelligent choice. All the examples you mentioned are part of the regular usage for those grains and if at some point the addition of them into the mix put a bit of pressure on the price it has certainly balanced. However, to take a portion of a commodity supply (corn) whose use tentacles reach the bulk of Americans in many situations and apply it to making fuel which produces less MPG than other additives does not in anyway make real sense to me. To top off this error in judgement the upward price pressure the corn used for fuel places on corn's normal use will continue to be a financial burdon for everyone. That to me makes not one iota of sense especially when we are not in the best of fiscal condition. Huge increases in fuel, now rapidly rising food cost, feed grains skyrocking and anything which has anything to do with corn products is facing fast rising cost structures makes this an aweful time to use corn as a fuel additive which is not even one of the best. We have a mediocre product being added to our fuel system which is driving the cost of so many items up and only adding to our financial woes.

Again, I feel your understanding of the usage of corn which some call reprehensible for a fuel product doesn't quite reach the point. It is obvious to me whoever created this driving effort to produce more corn based fuel did not even give it a cursory thought as to its overall effect on all of us or if they did they didn't care.

Thanks for all the comments!

Michael, I don't believe I used the word reprehensible, I used the word foolish. I mean this word in the context of government tax policy. I don't blame farmers for planting something that improves their profitability through tax credits. Small farmers and family farmers are typically operating at the limits of their budgets- nobody blames them for planting what the government wants. What I blame is the politicians who propagate the untruth that corm ethanol is in any way good for the environment or the fuel probem (foreign oil problem). I have documented large numbers of ways that corn ethanol is bad for the environment and fails to help the fuel problem on my blog, Chemistry for a sustainable world.

I'm not aware of barley, rice or wheat-based alcohol being used for automobile fuel on any significant scale, but I don't know everything, so maybe I missed this.

Spencer provides a very good discussion of many of the issues.

Other issues include: (1) many farmers have quit crop rotation because they can't afford to miss a season of tax rebates from corn production. This means much more use of artificial fertilizer, more fertilizer runoff into streams, lakes and rivers (because naturally fixed nitrogen is more stable in the soil than artificial fertilizer, which is usually ammonia gas). It also means that other crops are not being planted, adding to shortages and helping to increase prices. Damage from fertilizer is already being seen as far away as the Gulf of Mexico, where algal blooms are increasing and fish are suffering (2) growing corn and then producing ethanol from it both require large amounts of fresh water. It has been predicted that dust-bowl like conditions could be achieved by overtaxing the aquifer that feeds the great plains (the same water table that dried up to cause the original dust bowl).

I'm not in any way an enemy of biotechnology, or technology, or biofuels per se. I like the idea of waste vegetable oil for biodiesel for example (it isn't in competition with fuel and there is a diesel shortage), I just feel that some applications of farm crops to fuel usage are extremely harmful to the environment and economy, especially when food is put in competition with fuel, which gives us a double problem, since fuel prices now cause an increase in food pries both directly and indirectly. This isn't merely an uninformed opinion: every article on my blog is backed up by major reports from sources that include one or more of the following: scientific journals, highly credible nongovernmental organizations, governmental labs and major economic analysts.

If you have doubts, read the Chicago news story on chicken feed and the price of eggs and the Economist article on how ethanol from corn is totally irrelevant to the fuel price crisis, but has a major effect on food prices. These are both discussed at Chemistry for a sustainable world.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Great article James. This admin was really short sighted when it went all out with ethanol. It was at best an insane approach. They should have tested out what they are doing in India ... namely the Jatropha plant (cheap and grows almost unattended) as well as sorghum (4x better than corn).

Using any food sources for fuel is counterproductive to the economic result. I can't believe we have waited so long to start the process with switchgrass. I'd like to know how close we really are to getting a conversion plant.

Of course, that alone will not be enough. We need to also make full use of the natural oil resources we have.

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Something to think about.