News, Maybe

<a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ETHANOL_FIGHT?SITE=MTBIL&SECTION=BUSINESS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT" >Ethanol boom divides farmers, ranchers</a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>From corn fields to Wall Street, enthusiasm for ethanol is at an all-time high. But not everyone is enthusiastic.<br />n<br />nDemand for the corn-based fuel is driving up the cost of feed corn, making it more expensive to feed cows, chickens and pigs.<br />n<br />n"It's hard to see where the future is, if corn keeps going up," said Kerby Barker, a cattle rancher in southwestern Wyoming. "Anytime you jack up the price of fuel, anytime you jack up the price of corn, it just drives up our bottom line."<br />n<br />nLong-term, it could drive up the cost of food, which is alarming to meat producers and food companies.</blockquote><br />n<br />nI guess this is news, I've been talking about this for a while so it's not news to me. Turning our food into fuel is going to raise the price of not only our meat, but all the food we eat in the US in one way or another. Is this smart, is this the way we need to go? I'm not so sure but most of the country is so we furn our food into fuel. That's the way things go. <br />n<br />nI did find this report that the ethanol market <a href="http://www.brownfieldnetwork.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=03B67406-DA5F-7DF7-F4C615B917D7BD43">has about hit saturation</a> as really interesting.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>Collins says, however, the continued climb in ethanol output will saturate the market for ten percent blended gasoline, or E-10 as it’s called. He says greater use of E-85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol blended with 15 percent gasoline, will have to be promoted to use the output of new plants. Even then, when asked if crop production will be able to keep up, Collins is unsure.</blockquote><br />n<br />nI haven't seen very much E-10 around here so I don't see how we have reached market saturation but maybe it's more expensive than it's worth to transport the ethanol here to Montana, I don't know. I know I keep hearing rumbles about ethanol plants here in Montana but there has yet to be one break ground. I don't know why, to tell you the truth, I don't care.<br />n<br />nTurning our food into fuel is a questionable decision to me. I note that even the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> doesn't know if crop production can keep up with everything that is now being demanded of it. Right now the politicians are subsidizing both the ethanol and the farm industry to try to feed and fuel our country. What are they going to do when food prices shoot up so high that consumers can't afford to eat any more. Subsidize consumers to buy food? Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it.<br />n<br />n<strong>To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Henry David Thoreau</strong>