Cheaper Gas................

[lawsoncl]

"It's raising corn prices" doesn't bump sweet corn at the grocery store, that's just profiteering by the distributor. Fuel grade corn for distillation is feed corn for cows, not humans, and the distiller's grains from the processing make them good money on the feed lots. They are raking it in with both hands.

Yes there are different varieties of corn depending on the intended use, however part of the problem is the govt subsidies are encouraging farmers to switch to "fuel" corn instead of "food" corn. This is influencing the supply and pricing of corn for other uses. If the govt subsidies were not there, then there would be a lower profit and farmers wouldn't be switching over.

Corn is a lousy feedstock for producing ethanol. Switchgrass is a much better feedstock, but alas there is not switchgrass lobby group with congressmen intheir pockets. Corn ethanol is a long term solution and can never provide enough ethanol to displace any significant percentage of our current oil consumption.

The amount of money the govt is pouring into corn from ethanol is insane. We'd be much better using that money to research viable methods for producing alternate fuels. Putting that money into newer nuclear reactor technology and driving down the price of electricity would have a stronger impact on our oil usage for example.