I heard a radio news program a few days ago on Sirius that also was discussing high food prices and ethanol and a movement in Congress to reduce the amount of ethanol required in gasoline, etc.

They had a different set of reasons for this anti ethanol push. This program said that there are a number of agricultural companies that USE corn in their own businesses that desperately want the price of corn to come down and are lobbying intensely in Congress to make ethanol markets less attractive.

The only one of the names that I can remember off hand for sure was Tyson. They were talking about recent financial results from a group of companies like Tyson that are taking a big hit to the income statement by high corn (chicken feed) prices.

I think ADM was another company negatively affected financially by high raw material. They talked about how ADM is also a producer of ethanol, if I recall correctly, but has been hurt much more than helped financially by high corn and soybean prices.

Perhaps I shouldn't mention any company names here but it helps illustrate the point.

According to this news report, there are many folks in other industries hurt by high grain prices that are lobbying and using a variety of reasons, (food shortages, high gas prices, etc.) to try to cool ethanol and bring corn and with them soybean prices down.

I was thinking that the oil companies would be more interested in bashing corn grain based ethanol but this program said that much of the pressure was from other users of grain as a raw material.

Just another point of view on ethanol, but it would explain why suddenly there are so many negative news reports etc on ethanol. There was an article even in the Chicago Tribune on the front page recently obviously written by some one with almost no knowledge of agriculture but he sure knew that corn based ethanol was the reason behind world food shortages! Sounded like a rewritten press release from someone interested in bashing ethanol to me.

fwiw

Jim at Dawn