A Corny Story
Today on Marketplace, a love letter to my home state, which was once the breadbasket of the world, but is now in the business of starving poor people. Oh, it’s not really about you, Iowa. It’s about how politics starves poor people. You just got caught in the middle, Iowa, and I’ll always love you.
April 23rd, 2008 10:52
Nice commentary on a still-undercovered issue.
April 23rd, 2008 15:09
Is this really all about Biofuels and subsidies?
“Work by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington suggests that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices.”
Further, “many of the upheavals over food prices abroad have concerned rice and wheat, neither of which is used as a biofuel.”
Like the housing bubble is there a part being played by the Wall Street speculators and paper pushes foisting yet another bubble onto the world, this time in commodities. I have to wonder.
http://iht.com/articles/2008/04/15/business/15food.php?page=2
April 23rd, 2008 16:00
My home and current province, Saskatchewan, has always had the proper distinction of being the “breadbasket of the world.” I demand an apology! I feel bitter! Where’s my gun?
April 23rd, 2008 16:33
You are a bit unfair on McCain’s “flip-flop.” In the same speech he said that ethanol didn’t make sense at $20 a barrel but “made sense at $80 a barrel,” he also said it should still be done without mandates or subsidies. Plent of references to that at the time. He repeated that in several speeches in Iowa itself.
He said that in Ames, Iowa, in November 2007 before the caucus, before a conference on “growing the bioeconomy” (which I must assume is a euphemism for Iowans interested in corn ethanol.)
I don’t think that there’s anything unreasonable in saying, “Ethanol may make sense now with higher oil prices, but that should be demonstrated without subsidies.” Personally I think that the evidence shows that ethanol still isn’t worth it, but I’d be happy to let the market decide.
April 23rd, 2008 16:35
He then went down in the Iowa polls after criticizing ethanol subsidies at the conference, while insisting that he though that happy ethanol could become successful without subsidies if subsidies for oil and other fuels, “alternative” and not, were removed.
April 23rd, 2008 16:50
And both of which are substitutes for corn, which is used as a biofuel. An increase in demand for one leads to an increase in demand for the others, and so too prices.
I see your knowledge of rudimentary economics hasn’t improved much since you quit commenting at Cafe Hayek, muirgeo.
April 23rd, 2008 19:43
“But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/worldbusiness/17warm.html?hp
April 25th, 2008 11:25
You just got caught in the middle, Iowa, and I’ll always love you.
But not the way you love your parents, and not in a particularlist way because it’s your home state, right Will? Only incidentally and faithlessly will you “always love” it, right?
April 25th, 2008 11:28
That’s right John. I was waiting for this, but I was starting to think it would never come, so thank you.