Grist | Topics | 5 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 5 of 5
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Next market bubble: farmland! Thanks to the ethanol boom, big investors are plowing cash into corn country	Tom Philpott	07 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Big investors seem to have forgotten how to exist without some sort of speculative bubble. In the last decade, they've whipped cash from tech stocks to bonds to emerging markets to real estate to junk mortgages. With the latter bubble now deflating rapidly, they've turned to ... Midwestern farmland? Yes, big cornfields. Here's a Chicago asset manager talking about who's buying up farmland, quoted in USA Today: It's everybody from the person concerned about the sto ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, economy, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Monsanto counts its cash Seed-and-chemical giant sees its profit triple	Tom Philpott	04 Jan 2008	Gristmill
In a gold rush, the firms that supply the gold diggers with tools -- not the gold diggers themselves -- make the highest and steadiest profits. That's a platitude, but it's also usually true. And it's now playing out in the boom in corn-based ethanol. Don't waste much time envying corn farmers. Sure, they've seen the price of their product double over the past year and a half or so. But they've also seen their costs inch up. Fertilizer, land rents (much of the farml ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

The 'Exxon of corn' licks its chops Archer Daniels Midland sees glut as opportunity to consolidate the ethanol market	Tom Philpott	03 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Over the past year, ethanol production has exploded -- surpassing even the dramatically higher "alternative fuel requirement" in last year's energy bill. And now we have a glut of ethanol on the market, which has pushed prices down dramatically and caused many ethanol plants -- particularly independent farmer-owned ones -- to struggle. But Archer Daniels Midland, hailed on Wall Street as the Exxon of corn, is seeing the downturn in ethanol prices as an ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Miles to Go An interview with Missouri farmer and ethanol co-op member Brian Miles	Yolanda Crous	13 Dec 2006	Main Dish
Cultivating change? Photo: iStockphoto Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, Brian Miles spends his days working the family farm. Unlike his forebears, however, he also sits on the board of Mid-Missouri Energy, a farmer-owned ethanol cooperative in Malta Bend, Mo. Grist talked to Miles about the present ethanol boom, the potential for an ethanol bust, and the ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, ethanol, interview, Missouri (all these topics)

Something Ventured, Something Gained Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla chats about the promise of ethanol	Amanda Griscom Little	08 Dec 2006	Main Dish
Venture capitalist and ethanol booster Vinod Khosla. Billionaires are piling onto the biofuels bandwagon. Bill Gates is doing it. Richard Branson is doing it. The Google guys are doing it. Less well-known is the billionaire who kicked off the whole trend: Vinod Khosla, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and former partner with Kleiner Perkins, the ven ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, ethanol (all these topics)

Stories About: agriculture AND biofuels AND business AND energy AND ethanol