Bottom line is that farmers control the use of two finite -- very finite -- resources: land and water (access to sun comes with the land).  Once they accepted the apple from Satan and started using those to make food for machines instead of food for people, they started us down the road to where a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, whether it's in the form of food, natural gas (fertilizer) or ethanol/biodiesel (motor fuel).  

Corporate farmers care little or nothing for the use to which their crop is put -- their job is to minimize the costs of the inputs and maximize the return on sales, ignoring the long-term health of the soil (which is artificially juiced with petrofertilizers).

So they pit the stomachs against the fuel tanks and chase the subsidies, which they feed back to Congress to ensure further subsidies, an unholy alliance that is starving people to death.  That's what farm policy is to day.

Save your community: Cut greenhouse gas emissions 5% per year.

"In one report by an industry group, oil has a greater impact on food prices -- by a factor of 2 to 1 -- than ethanol."

Was that an ethanol industry group or an agribizz industry group?  

Is that for processed food?  Ethanol would seem to be the major cause of commodity grain price rise.  

Natural gas prices effect fertilizer, but why did ammonia prices rise so fast?  Corn for ethanol increased ammonia fertilizer demand.  That in turn made natural gas rise.  Now ammonia is shipped on tankers from Russia, where it is made from their cheaper natural gas.

Do chemicals (herbicides, pesticides) rising in cost because of higher oil really constitute a large enough portion of farm costs to account for a 2 to 1 ratio?  That is doubtfull.  These are value added petroleum products, unlike gasoline or diesel, their price is not as greatly effected by the price of the oil feedstock.

And those who are rioting because they are about to starve, eat commodity grain.  They grind and cook it themselves, no oil input needed.

For them it really is food or biofuel.  The biofuel for our gas guzzlers, they can't afford cars.

I suspect industry self serving it's own interests might have contributed to that finding of a 2 to 1 ratio.  People are rioting because of ethanol.  You said it yourself, we are the bread (grain) basket.

Your Farm and Food Policy Project looks great Alan.  I would like to see if you have considered farm biogas, wind, and solar energy projects in farm policy?

Ag and energy policy seems to be coming together.  Why can't our farms get the cash we are now sending offshore to buy oil by going to a renewable smart grid charging plugin hybrid vehicles?  Farm biogas, unlike ethanol, really does vastly reduce GHG.

It also provides organic fertilizer from the biodigestion of manure and biomass crop waste. Saving huge costs and GHG from the use of ammonia and mined fertilizer.  

Manure and fertilizer  run off releases huge amounts of methane, a 21 times worse GHG than cO2.  Biodigestion and organic fertilizer prevents that run off.  

In Sweden they are powering trains with methane, the energy ingredient in biogas.  Trains are 8 times more efficient in moving freight than oil powered trucks.

Farmers could get energy income, providing us all with power, and subsidies could be greatly reduced that way as fertilizer costs came down.  Tractors can run on biogas too.

I would like to see subsidies diverted from energy status quo industries like coal, nuclear, and ethanol to provide direct per kwh subsidies to farmers who invest in farm biogas power generation, wind farms, and solar power.

A tax neutral farm/energy policy.  That would provide stable, storable biogas power to backup a renewable smart grid.  The power we need is there.  And it will vastly reduce GHG.  And revive the farm and manufacturing sector economies.

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People are literally starving so wealthy nations can guzzle ethanol.  Ethanol actually doubles GHG emissions compared to oil based fuels.

This is an emergency, a starvation emergency and a GHG emergency.  Ethanol farming must stop.

It's not just a question of "sustainability", whatever that very vague term might mean.

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In the United States, "the other 81 cents of the retail food dollar comes from food distribution and marketing costs."

In poor countries, where the people tend to eat products that are much less processed (corn meal, bread, rice), the basic price of the commodity accounts for a much higher share of the food item purchased by final consumers. And the share of food in their budget is typically 50% or more, not 10% like it is (on average) in the United States.

These are only my personal opinions.

My point exactly.  People who depend on commodity corn and grain to survive are competing directly against the highly subsidized ethanol industry for food.  

For them it's food or fuel farming.  These food riots and mass starvation tell us that the poorest of the poor are losing the "free" market battle.

Gas guzzler agribizz industries are winning.

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I say "free" markets, with tongue in cheek.  Hehey.  Like "clean" coal.  Or Bush, "commander" in chief.  

It's in that vein.  A rich one, mining the irony of modern mass delusion.

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