Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears

[Marcus Bryant]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?_r=1&hp

[coyotes_geek]

Stop. Ethanol. Subsidies.

[MannyIsGod]

Stop. Ethanol. Subsidies.

[baseline bum]

Stop. Ethanol. Subsidies.

If there is one thing the right and the left can agree on, it's this.

[TeyshaBlue]

If there is one thing the right and the left can agree on, it's this.

Troof.

[Winehole23]

http://www.economist.com/node/18529711?story_id=18529711

[baseline bum]

Troof.

OK, Troofers being morons is another.

[Marcus Bryant]

http://www.economist.com/node/18529711?story_id=18529711

Norquist needs to drink a gallon of ethanol.

[boutons_deux]

U.S. corn reserves expected to fall to 15-year low

Rising demand for corn from ethanol producers is pushing U.S. reserves to the lowest point in 15 years, a trend that could lead to higher grain and food prices this year.

The Agriculture Department on Friday left its estimate for corn reserves unchanged from the previous month. The reserves are projected to fall to 675 million bushels in late August, when the harvest begins, or roughly 5 percent of all corn consumed in the United States. That would be the lowest surplus level since 1996.

The limited supply is chiefly because of increasing demand from ethanol makers, which rose 1 percent to 5 billion bushels. That's about 40 percent of the total crop.

http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/apr/08/us-corn-reserves-expected-fall-15-year-low/

And of course, corn ethanol reduces gas prices and oil importation.

BigFarma taking care of itself, screwing everybody else.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.economist.com/node/18529711?story_id=18529711


Tax reductio ad absurdum

Senator Coburn has the better of this argument. Even the Wall Street Journal, one of Mr Norquist’s admirers, said in an editorial this week that the compelling taxpayer interest in this case is to end a policy that is “driving up the cost of food and fuel with no benefit for the environment or American energy security.”

But the significance of the quarrel goes well beyond ethanol. Bruce Bartlett, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan, laments the fact that Senator Coburn is one of too few Republicans who understand the need for higher revenues and not just spending cuts. To tame the deficit by cuts alone would require such deep ones that the Republicans could not hope to pass them without winning back the White House and a filibuster-proof majority of fiscal hawks in the Senate. And it might not happen even in that impossible event. When the Republicans last had full control, in the 2000s, they cut nothing except taxes, and added to entitlements.

You beat me to it.