Food vs. fuel reality.

[Guest guest]

Like him or not, Glenn Beck has a video out about the use of corn in the US. A record amount of corn will be grown in the US this year but:

1. 36% will go to ethanal, 8% for all food use, 36% shipped overseas.

2. Grain stores are down to a few weeks in the US.

All this new corn planting is crowding out other crops like wheat and soybeans as farmers chase the higher returns on corn. Of course all of this is only due to massive government subsidies for ethanol. I just wonder that if there is demand, will the US keep its own grain or actually send more overseas?

This isn't the first time government has screwed up crops. Back in the 1960's and 1970's, the government got involved with the farms by encouraging wheat planting. You might have seen stories about this period, about grain rotting at the silos. Well, this was mostly government's fault. What happened behind the scenes was government buying up the use of rail cars to ship its own grain and often leave it sitting on sidings in the rail cars while privately grown grain was being dumped on the ground outside stuffed silos where it was all rotting.

What's happening now is right out of Atlas Shrugged. In the novel, government ordered soybeans to be grown because it was deemed healthier than wheat (in reality government wants corn for ethanol over food). In the novel, the crops were shipped all around the country at the expense of other crops and a food shortage happened. It was so bad that government took the seed stocks needed for future crops and let them be eaten as well. I would not be surprised to see that happen in reality either.