Tuesday, August 12, 2008
A Good Corn Crop, Despite Floods
Farmers recover from heavy rains that threatened to cause high food and ethanol prices.
By Kevin Bullis
Earlier this year, flooding in the Midwest
kept farmers from planting their crops on time, which caused the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) to predict lower yields, and had some experts
worried that a bad season could lead to high food prices and threaten the
ethanol industry.
But farmers seem to have recovered. The latest
crop production statistics from the USDA, released this morning, predict
that this year will boast the second best corn crop on record. That could be
good news for biofuels. This year, biofuels, which had enjoyed large
popularity, were linked to rising food prices and hence were widely criticized.
A bad year for corn, the source of ethanol in the United States, could have led to
higher food prices and exacerbated the backlash against biofuels.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
We've been using 12% of the corn produced worldwide to supply America's corn ethanol boondoggle. That's a total shame, because most of that corn would have been exported to feed people. As it is, exports are due to trickle to nothing.
MakeSense
08/13/2008
Posts:93
Lets not count our kernels until they are in the silo. Another bad weather event could ruin those projected harvest numbers that the USDA is forecasting.
That is why corn commodities are not dropping as much as they have in the past month or two.
Pugeez
11/04/2008
Posts:1