Generally, I’m not a fan of ethanol as a fuel, and totally opposed to food-product based ethanol. The so called “Green” movement’s concern about reducing the use of fossil fuel, may help reduce some greenhouse gases, that are supposedly making the earth warmer, but biofuel is so ineffecient to produce will it really resolve the problem? It is problematic to pipeline ethanol because of evaporation problems. It takes fuel to grow the bio material; planting and harvesting, so there is a huge production efficiancy cost or waste to producing ethanol.

Anyway, I’ll get into that some other time….

What about the corn-based ethanol every farmer in America is racing to plant. The “Green” movement seems to have forgotten about the laws of unintended consquences. When you start subsidizing farms to grow corn and soybeans for fuel, that means they are growing less other grains, such as wheat, barely, and vegetables, etc. The laws of supply and demand say, if there is short supply of something the price goes up. So what’s happening in your grocery store? The price of vegetables have….gone up! Imagine that? What else is happening? We’re subsizing the farmers to grow corn for fuel, so where is the corn going now…for fuel. Ever look at the contents of just about any boxed or canned product? What’s the ingredient that is in practically all of them? Corn Syrup! So, again, the laws of supply and demand dictate, if the corn is getting a good price for fuel, it’s going to be in short supply for corn syrup, and thus all the other food prices rise. Great, we’ve made our gasoline cheaper and maybe cleaner going into our cars, but we’ve jacked the price of food up in the process. Which will either make it a wash, or a worse alternative compared to gasoline.

I’m just the simple man. I’m not a chemist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but some of this stuff seems so obvious to me. Especially, living in a rural Illinois farm community where you now see all the farmers erecting new buildings, plowing with new tractors, and driving new cars. It’s clear to me something has happened in the last year!

In Illinois, the farmers all get reduced rates on their property taxes, because they are the poor old family [corporate] farmers. I couldn’t even begin to explain to you what that does to the schools in the small town who’s only revenue is property tax money, and the largest owners of property hardly have to foot any of the bill. I believe, it’s only a matter of time before the average citizen realizes their wallet is shrinking in the name green and clean, and demand enough is enough.