Rise in US Ethanol Demand Spurs Food Price Increases

The nation's unquenchable thirst for gasoline -- and finding an alternative to what's been called our addiction to oil -- has produced an unintended consequence: The cost of the foods that fuel our bodies has jumped.

Beef prices are up. So are the costs of milk, cereal, eggs, chicken and pork.

And corn is getting the blame. President Bush's call for the nation to cure its addiction to oil stoked a growing demand for ethanol, which is mostly made from corn. Greater demand for corn has inflated prices from a historically stable $2 per bushel to about $4.
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cdoke - 6/15/2007 1:04:05 PM

+1 Boost

Peter Tertzakian [et alia] was right.

I you ever have a chance to meet him or hear him speak, I urge you do to so. It is one of these talks that he warned that ethonal had the potential to be "dangerous" but really didn't elaborate much, but he did say that increased food prices were highly likely. ...I didn't know he was on the Daily Show...

I don't know if I were in that situation I could help but turn to my nay-sayers, point and say, "HA!"

Htay7500 - 6/15/2007 1:22:52 PM

+1 Boost

oh my, too bad Brazil is heavily addicted to ethanol and we dont hear them complaining.

Will_ - 6/15/2007 2:03:34 PM

+1 Boost

Ethanol practices in Brazil are slightly different than the rest of the world turning to ethanol.

Rupert - 6/15/2007 6:14:12 PM

+1 Boost

They use sugar cane, and they have more land to develop.

Trouble with all this ethanol is supply. The US makes over 70% of the world's corn, imagine if you just stopped?

EnnNorak - 6/16/2007 10:02:30 AM

0 Boost

Corn ethanol takes almost as much energy to produce as what you get out of it. Sugar cane ethanol (as in Brasil) is a totally different story so lets stop getting fat on sugar-saturated food and use Florida's sugar cane fields to produce feed stock for ethanol production.