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Oil’s Big Push on Corn
You would think that with oil crisis levitating over $100/barrel and gasoline continuing its relentless march towards $5/gallon, farmers would be wring their hands, wondering how they can afford the fuel for their machinery. Not so.
The burgeoning demand for energy has spilled over to the corn market, where demand for feedstock by ethanol refiners is going from strength to strength. Nearly 40% of the country’s corn crop is being diverted to ethanol production. Margins at the big ethanol producers, like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), once nonexistent, are now widening rapidly.
I have been a huge full on the whole food complex since I put out my watershed piece out last May (click here for “Going Back Into the Ags” at http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/june-24-2010.html ). Now that we are into the planting season, you might expect the volatility of food prices generally to increase. There are still drought conditions in many of the world’s major producing areas. Stockpiles are near record lows. Much of the unrest in the Middle East is over rapidly rising food prices, where they are huge importers.
Notice that once the S&P 500 bounced, the first thing that traders poured back into were the ags, soaking up ETF’s (JJG) and (DBA) as fast as they could click their mice. I think we are one year into a decade long bull market for food, and that investors should be buying every substantial dip in the sector.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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My long term indicators warn of significant US Dollar upside / Euro and equity weakness.
This will affect commodity prices.
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
It took me a long time to understand the difference between modern republican and democrats; the answer is the the republicans, ie. Sarah Palin are complete idiots; and the democrats, ie. Barack Obama, are complete idiots; but the republic iditots want to drill oil wells; and the democratic idiots don't; it doesn't even matter what the "story" is that is attached to these positions; the only thing that matters is to elect somebody who wants to drill oiil wells; the rest of it is bullshit.
Where... it seems obvious the best place to drill...is in our brain...we strike one the size of Ghawar...just under the skin...huge potential.
wow haven't seen such a collection of infomercials in a long time, did just enjoy some popcorn but now my gas tank is empty
Each bushel of corn diverted to ethanol is a bushel the world will learn to live without.
This way, when America collapses, it won't be missed.
Please use 100% of the corn within this decade.
Pesticides Pesticides and generic modified seeds, and cheat nature by playing god with the soil, man deserves what is coming. We are sorry ass stewards of our mother earth all for the sake of a quick profit rewards by obtaining growth at any cost. The cost of our environment, and our peoples prosperity. The crow and blackfoot and sioux spirits must be crying. The system is broken when corporations (another name for a handfull of elite rich powerfull people)who hide behind lawyers and government to rape the land at the expense of a quick buck. Companies should show responsibility for their gifts of profits. Instead they show arrogance and disregard for the future. God help us all , Ethanol industry is a sin and crime against the US people, we have abundent gas reserves and no energy policy. This sucks keep fighting for the change and to implement a sound energy policy that makes sense.
At $4/bushel for corn, a 10 oz box of cornflakes has 5 cents of corn in it. At $8/bushel, it's 10 cents. When that happens, it triggers this reaction in food companies. They raise the price of cornflakes 45 cents a box and blame it on ethanol.
If you take the current price of corn and you realize that the diesel fuel to carry the box of cornflakes to market is 3 times the cost of the corn that's in the box of cornflakes, so why are we attacking the farmers for being productive? And the fact is, if you look at ethanol production, you're getting both ethanol and food stock out of exactly the same bushel, because we are more and more sophisticated about how to do this. The truth is that ethanol, used as a scapegoat, is making food processors richer. Food ingredients make up such small price components of finished foodstuffs that they can double, triple or even quadruple without much impact on net costs to consumers. When corn prices fell as they did in 2009, food processors didn't lower prices. They profited. When the price of cotton doubles, the price of clothing won't double. Clothing manufacturers spend more on labor, energy and marketing than they do on cotton.
Many will be surprised at how easily commodity cost increases are absorbed by mills and processors, although as their margins will be squeezed, they will want everyone to think that is the reason that they are raising prices so much. It took China and biofuels to unleash ag values. Many don't like it. The complaining will get louder. They loved the cheap food policy that kept farmers farming for the government, living off subsidies that depressed prices for endusers. That period, which has passed, will be thought of as the good old days for endusers. China's economic growth is the primary driver behind world food price inflation, soaking up world commodity production capacity. I don't believe that surging commodity prices will necessarily turn into the inflation that so many fear. I think that it is just a necessary repricing of an under-valued sector. Food has been too cheap too long. I think that China and populations of new consumers being created by global economic growth in emerging nations is the primary driver for higher commodity prices.
American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman said, "Every American owes a lot to farmers. Our diversity makes America's foodie culture possible. Our productivity allows our society the luxury of debating how to produce food versus where to get food."
Stallman added, "The 2010 National Resources Inventory confirms we are producing more with fewer resources. Those of us running equipment, buying supplies and feeding livestock have known that all along. Total U.S. crop yield has increased more than 360 percent since 1950. Farmers are producing 262 percent more food with 2 percent fewer inputs. It takes 40 percent less feed for a cow to produce 100 pounds of milk that it did just 30 years ago. Any way you slice it, more with less make sense for people and our planet."
When the WSJ still quotes long discredited pseudo experts like Cornell University's David Pinental, an ethanol hater, as their source for biased distorted statistics, as they did in a recent editorial, they join groups like the HSUS and PETA as fringe lunatics.
Most media is urban and rural media is focused mostly as advertisers for ag industry looking to sell farmers something or superficial news reporting. The investigative reporting that is done about agriculture is typically an endeavor of someone with an axe to grind or on some self appointed crusade to save the world, reshaping agriculture to fit their perception of utopia. As I glean the proliferation of anti-ethanol editorials from the Wall Street Journal to the Chicago Tribune one connecting theme is their lack of broad perspective and assumptions based on errors in facts.
Nearly 40% of U.S. corn production goes to the ethanol industry. That is true. What they don't say is that prior to the ethanol industry being developed there was a persistent glut of corn stocks depressing prices which were consistently below the cost of production which was the motivation for farm subsidies in order to stabilize the ag economy. Farm subsidies, some of which are still being paid, are the carryover vestige of that era that can be phased out because of ethanol. How is that not a good thing?
The price of corn has improved to the point corn growers are being well paid after a couple decades of low returns. U.S. corn production has expanded by the amount used by the ethanol industry over the course of its development. Ethanol naysayers would have everyone believe that ethanol has taken corn out of the mouths of babies and hogs. Food and feed usage of corn has not conceded any corn to ethanol production and corn exports have expanded during this period on the productivity of US corn growers. We produced enough corn for the ethanol industry by making the pie bigger and in doing so brought economic prosperity to the heartland.
Another very important fact that the ethanol naysayers leave out from those calculating net energy to those simply stating ethanol usage of corn is the production of the co-product distiller's grain and the contribution that it makes to the feed supply. Roughly one-third of the nearly 5 billion bushels of corn going to ethanol comes back pound for pound as an enhanced feedstuff. I say, enhanced because the feed value of the corn and soy meal that it displaces in feed rations is closer to 40% of the amount of corn used by the ethanol industry. Distiller's grain will exceed soy meal as the second largest feedstuff utilized in the U.S. this year and the anti-ethanol pundits appear oblivious to that fact. If the displacement shared between corn and soy meal from distillers grain were all factored against corn, it equals 2 billion bushels.
In other words, the ethanol industry only has net consumption of 3 billion bushels of corn instead of the 5 billion touted. Every time we hear that the ethanol industry uses 100 million bushels of corn, 40 million bushels of feed value is returned through distiller's grain. The availability of this economically sold feedstuff has shifted the cost of gain advantage in the beef industry in particular from the southern plains to the Midwest where ethanol plants are concentrated and the wet product is available. Dried distillers grain exports are surging as well adding a feedstuff to the export market. These are all facts that are omitted from the ethanol debate because they favor ethanol so do not interest the prime media that appears to like the story that ethanol is bad, much better.
Other distortions of facts read in editorials are that ethanol is subsidized and oil is not, farmers receive ethanol subsidies when they do not, and that the ethanol tariff is restricting ethanol imports and that the increase in corn prices is starving impoverished populations. One by one. . . the oil industry receives multiples of the subsidies through tax benefits and other incentives baked into the system so long that they are considered sacrosanct, not to mention the military subsidy estimated at $84 billion annually to provide public security service to guard the private oil companies' oil infrastructure without charge.
It is amazing how many oil Congressman and Senators who favor subsidizing big oil think ethanol is a boondoggle. Farmers do not receive any ethanol subsidies. The Blenders credit goes directly to the entity that blends ethanol into gasoline, typically a petroleum industry distributer. The consumer benefits indirectly from the subsidy in the form of lower gas prices resulting from ethanol production which is now only second in equivalence to Canadian oil imports, having exceeded the equivalent of oil imported from Saudi Arabia. Gas prices are surging because of political turmoil in the mid-east but without ethanol adding to aggregate U.S. fuel supply, the impact on U.S. energy costs of the oil price shock would be significantly magnified. Ethanol is doing exactly what it was supposed to do, help provide a buffer for the U.S. to foreign oil dependence and energy cost price shocks. We should be jumping up and down in glee over the positive impact that ethanol is having on fuel costs today and instead the anti-ethanol media isn't running that story.
Is the ethanol tariff restricting ethanol imports? That the impression that the anti-ethanol press leaves with the public. They assume that Brazil has ethanol that would be loaded on boats the second the tariff was eliminated. They are uninformed. Brazil is importing ethanol. There are reports of them importing U.S. ethanol. The price of sugar has climbed so high that refiners are selling sugar rather than convert it to ethanol. Sugar is being priced out of ethanol production more than corn has been. Brazil uses an E-23 blend where we use E-10 and 100% ethanol where we use E-85. Every vehicle GM sells in Brazil is flex-fuel and their economic growth rate is stronger than ours so fuel demand growth is more accelerated.
The U.S. ethanol industry exported nearly 400 million gallons of ethanol last year and expectations are that Brazil will buy more U.S. ethanol deflating those who think that the tariff is somehow holding back a wall of ethanol imports. The Caribbean Initiative was a measure passed to create a loophole for ethanol to be imported into the U.S. tariff-free through Caribbean countries and none is coming in, even tariff free.
The basic premise that there is a surplus of ethanol someplace restricted from being imported into the U.S. is totally false. Demand outside the U.S. for ethanol is so strong there is an export market for it. Few even understand the relationship between the blender's credit and the ethanol tariff. All ethanol sold in the U.S., domestic or foreign, gets the blenders credit. It has to be paid to all to be WTO compliant. In order to offset the blender's credit that foreign ethanol would receive so that U.S. taxpayers are not subsidizing foreign ethanol, a tariff is assessed because that is a WTO compliant way to even it up. There is only a few cents difference between the blender's credit and the tariff so there is virtually no net tariff on foreign ethanol.
The ethanol tariff under current market condition of global supply and demand is a non-issue. Some who do understand this do not want the public to have the correct picture because they can rail about the unfairness of the tariff when it makes perfect sense. One other point - corn does not compete with sugar for acres, so it is not contributing to the shortage of sugar. The shortage of sugar is from strong demand from a growing world economy.
Is the ethanol industry starving anyone? I believe that food costs are climbing because of global economic emancipation of millions and millions of new consumers, EU rejection of biotechnology (GMOs), weather events, energy cost hikes, protectionist government food policies, and then maybe ethanol. You would think from ethanol critics that it is number 1, number 2 or number 3 when it is far down the list.
The U.S. ethanol industry is nearly built out to capacity near 15 billion gallons as allowed for in the RFS. The U.S. can spare 3 billion bushel which is the net corn consumption of ethanol when adjusted for distiller's grain. The U.S. is in a unique situation in being able to produce corn for ethanol relative to the rest of the world. No one I know is advocating any significant aggregate build up of ethanol production from food crops any where in the world beyond the current U.S. industry which is nearly complete. Next generation ethanol production would be cellulosic having no impact on food unless you are into eating corn cobs and wood chips. Those that think that higher grain prices will starve someone do not understand economics. The markets are calling for more investment and more production with higher prices. Higher prices will increase food production and wealth in both developed and undeveloped regions of the world as global food production capacity is increased - which is the only solution to growing demand.
Ethanol is not the problem, it is not the challenge nor is it even an impediment or obstacle to the solutions as to how agriculture feeds the world. Washington and the public are ignorant about ethanol and the primary media is making them dumber.
Ethanol is definetly an important part of the problem. Previously there was a persistent underpricing of corn products? Oh, suck my dick, you paid off freek. "Washington and the public are ignorant about ehthanol and the primary media is making them dumber;" you hope and you're actively subsidizing; but the facts are childishly simple; making motor fuel out of corn does not pay. It's a lose-lose proposition. This is very, very obvious; the propaganda comes from the tax farmers who are paid by the Federa Government; ie; you. Wake up, people, and object loudly and consistently; stop this madness.
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Bravo. Bedtime for Bozo here, may you drink heavily at JG Melon's (74th @3rd) at my expense one day. Or at Canyons in BR. www.canyonsbr.com. Click on the viewcam during daytime Sun and you'll be here tomorrow
Everyone knows Ethanol doesn't work. Arguing about it isn't going to change anything.
The Ethanol Industry is like any other industry in America. It's heavily subsidized corporations who use their excess capital from subsidies to buy politicians who heavily subsidize them. What part of this circle jerk called "American Capitalism" do people not understand? It's not going to end, until the mega collapse comes or everyone gets mad as hell.
It's not like any other industry in America; it is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED; not all industries are. You can change this by you vocal response to your Washington represenatatives and by promising to not vote for any POTUS that permits the ethanol scam. Do it now !
Yes, HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED, unlike the oil industry. No subsidies there.
What a waste of food.
As others have stated, how many MEALS PER GALLON are wasted?
Billions starving, and we want to use our food for junk. 6% of grains worldwide are being used for this crap, and as they proudly proclaim, it's just the start.
Biofuels Burn Billions of "Meals Per Gallon"!
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/17720
Billions starving? No. millions maybe.
Plenty more where that came from.
"Nearly 40% of the country’s corn crop is being diverted to ethanol production."
You are obviously clueless about the ethanol industry. Nothing is diverted. It has been stated enough times that now you are just sound like an idiot for repeating the lies. Corn that is made into ethanol comes from cattlefeed corn, not human corn. And once they extract the starch, it is still used as cattlefeed. There is no food lost. Not a difficult concept to grasp. Yet dummies like MHFT continue to spread 5 year old oil company propaganda from before the time the oil companies bought all the VSE and AVR plants out of their bankruptcies.
And for the cheap seats, one more time, corn made into ethanol still goes into the food chain, minus the starch. No matter what you think. no matter what you read. Ethanol plants are also cattle feed plants. They make extra money on the ethanol. That is why they do it. It is value added. It is stupid not to make ethanol because you get higher profits by seperating the starch and the nutrients. And that is all they are doing. Seperating starch and nutrients, then selling both.
And further, if they were not adding ethanol to gasoline, they would still be adding MTBE. You really hate farmers so much that you want to die of cancer?
The land being used to grow corn feed to cattle could be grown as food instead. People are growing this type of corn because they are subsidized.
You conveniently failed address the fact that there is a net loss of energy in producing corn that becomes ethanol.
"Nearly 40% of the country’s corn crop is being diverted to ethanol production."
It would probably be more accurate to point out that cropland is being diverted to corn production.
But, why are corn prices so high if corn is such a dual use grain?
And why are livestock prices so high? I can see feeders being high if the demand is there for some of that easy money feeding cheap corn, but corn ain't cheap.
And live cattle prices are way high. If the corn is so plentiful to feed, live prices and meat should be down, right????
Why is wheat so high???
You guys must be corn farmers!!
P.S. I'm selling down some feeders this week.
gh
And by the way, there is FIELD CORN and SWEET CORN. The sweet corn is eaten on the cob or frozen, and the field corn is made into corn syrup. The starch is made into corn syrup.
WalDude pays beeg $$$ to deep south farmers to produce timed sweet corn for March-May midwestern consumption. The families succulent enough to do this sweet deal (Robertsons et al in MS) can just tell them to GTH. Yes, pun intended, "sweet justice". When you (1) own the land without debt (2) own the crop insurance company and (3) and own the bank (Planters - 4 star), you have a dawg that hunts.
Corn syrup is a garbage "food" that when introduced into the human diet, is implicated in the rapidly rising rate of obesity and diabetes in the USA.
These are useful idiots who parrot the Big Lies about ethanol propagated by Big Oil using their Big Media.
It takes ~10 lbs of corn to make ~1 lb of beef. That's because cows do not digest starch and in fact feeding them corn causes a lot of gastronomic problems (i.e., bloating, stomach diseases, etc.).
If one distilled the 10 lbs of corn, one gets ~3.3 lbs of DDGs or dried distilled grains or the leftover liquid/solids comprised full of proteins, vitamins, etc., because fermentation and distillation only removes the sugar or starch from the feedstock used to make alcohol.
If one feeds the 3.3 lbs of DDGs to the cows, they actually gain 17% more weight!! Because they don't have to deal with the undigestable starch, their digestion system, i.e., 4 stomachs, works better. The cows are much happier.
During Prohibition, the IRS revenuers would go to the county farm fairs and they would go and find the fattest cows and pigs. Why? Because the farmers of those cows and pigs were feeding them their moonshined DDGs!
Here is a document that blows away some of these Big Oil myths about ethanol (even using one of the worst alcohol feedstocks like corn, this food vs. fuel bullshit still is all hot gas (pun intended!); corn yields only 250 gallons of ethanol per year per acre, feedstocks like sweet sorghum can produce up to 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of ethanol per year per acre, etc., etc., etc.):
www.LiquidEnergyOasis.com
I am the founder of this start-up company to be (the PDF is actually someone else's free document). We are doing small to medium scale alcohol energy AND food production using permaculture model in a local, community setting. Any questions, email me at david@liquidenergyoasis.comGet fucked; tax farmer. just roll over and die; do us all a favor.
Well stated. DDG's are a major part of animal rations now. If ethanol
was shutdown, more corn would be used for feed to replace DDG's.
As noted above I clearly dislike the ethanol fraud. Here are a couple more reasons: 1) the "great" American farmer is taking "CRP" land, that is conservation reserve program, farmland that the U.S. has spent billions to individual farmers not to plant due to its "erodability factor" (that's USDA speak for "ruts and stuff")and putting it back in to planted corn acres basically destroying 20 years of soil conservations practices. 2) it takes more fresh water , nearly 6 gallons, per gallon of ethanol processed, than all the "toilet needs" of every man woman and child in the United States...per day.......using, of course, the EPA's maximum 1 1/2 gallons per flush "mandate".....................it's a world gone mad.
No, it's not a world gone mad. It;s a "world" sold out to the politicians who are doing the bidding of the most vocal and strident of the activists; Obama believes he was elected, at least partly, by a consensus of environmentalists; he believes nothing; he is merely a tool; convince him that the votes lie with oil well drilling; and he wlll drill wells. The United States is in the amazing position of a world power that starved and impoverished itself, due to the impassioned of screeching of a minority of college sophmores.
Vote them all out!
Vote Libertarian, Communist, Green, whatever, just make sure to go to the polls and vote for the other guy or gal. Do Not press an R or a D. Let's send them a big, big message.
If we can just get everyone to do that, we may have a chance at some real change in our society.
Message not massage!
for those that have not seen it, peak oil and coming famine video
wordpress.com/2011/03/11/peak-oil-the-coming-famine/
burning food for fuel = less food for eating = more hunger = more deaths from hunger and malnutrition and disease = lower population.
population control bitchez
There is no shortage of foodstuffs, but it is downright foolish to burn food in the interest of "sustainability" when we could be burning something we cannot eat instead.
Thanks for your analysis, MHFT, always thought-provoking.
Well said - who does this guy think he's talking too here - a set of ill informed imbaciles?? No Sir, not here. Push your snake oil elsewhere.
Corn high? How about squash? It has gone from $15 to $65 a box in 3-4 weeks. Organic tomatoes that were $1.99/lb two months ago were $4.69/lb today. Growers are getting $1.20/lb for cotton, basis 75% of their historical yields.
All bubbles will burst but there is inflation locked into the system that isn't going away anytime soon. Wonder what rice prices are in Japan in 2-3 weeks?
In time, Ethanol will be recognized as one of the greatest boondoggles of humanity (besides MBS's and CDS's).
Want to see greedy humans taking food from the mouths of babes and converting it to cash for opportunists?
Meet the corn lobby, the corporate farming industry that milks the taxpayer for subsidie$, easment$, and the politicians who facilitate the scam for ca$h under the table (well - now that the Supreme's have sanctioned politicians being bought by corporations over the interests of the citizen - over the table too, two fisted like).
Ethanol is a net neutral or net negative in the energy equation, but a +5X multiplier for those in the corn lobby (and to hell with the hungry people of the world).
It is a double bonus in terms of societal perceptions because the corn lobby can simultaneously: wrap themselves in the flag, the corn husky romantic maize of the indigenous populations, and the midwesterny apple pie blue jean meme - all while appealing and appeasing the granola Berkenstock hippie crowd with the phony "green" label.
What a crock...
Elitist Malthusianism. "Let them eat rocks!" If you add up all the arable land being misused, the drying up of the planet water table, the destruction of rain forests, bringing more drought and salinity to what's left, more top soil erosion... you'll get kick, bang, shit the elites becoming the cry world wide. "A l'échafaud, les salauds!"
Well stated sir.
The Corn to Ethanol industry, the US version of the Easter Island logging industry...
Yes, of course. but the reason it exists is the agribusiness vote bloc; make double damn sure the politicians understand that you will vote out anyone who supports ethanol. Get is straight; they don't care what happens to the United States, the only thing they care about is getting elected.
Exactly. Where's the Lorax when you need him? Once-ler is run amok...
Krugman once blogged...
"So it seems the DFH's were right all along"
DFH = Dirty Fucking Hippie..
Don't agree with him on a lot of stuff, but in this case he was bang on...
You are incorrect on several counts. There is no shortage of foodstuffs. The U.S. is using 37 million acres for corn for ethanol alone. Ethanol is a zero, or less, thermal load entity, ie, it takes more energy to make than you get out of it. Measure it anyway you like, calories per gallon, BTU's per ton of corn.....it is from a physics standpoint an exercise in futility. And Cargill, who knows everything everywhere knows it. That is why they have chosen "now" to retrieve those precious Cargill family shares in exchange for Mosaic shares........Cargill knows the ethanol scam is going to end in December when the per gallon subsidies, the import restrictions on cane ethanol and perhaps even the EPA's ability to mandate emission levels ....will end. Those 3 items are what have driven the grain/soft commodity business. I am short Deere and Titan Machinery here.
Ethanol is a big factor, but QE is bigger. Regardless, I don't see the government pulling the plug on either anytime soon. Although ag charts look ugly right now, I wouldn't short them.
Ethanol buys votes; that's the only function of any government program. of any government program. to buy votes. Make your voice heard; make sure the psycopaths in Washington know, you do not vote for people who make motor fuel out of corn. do it now. do it in an organized manner. get real. all they do is buy votes; nothing else. never, never anything else. make sure they understand you will not vote for any politician who supports making fuel out of corn.
Honeybees are a bigger story than Ethanol or QE....
http://seenoevilspeaknoevilhearnoevil.blogspot.com/2011/03/two-honeybee-articles.html
WTF does Ethanol do besides inflate the price of corn and give you 10% less gasoline?
Oh. And have you ever noticed how cars have the stupid and impossible to gauge gasoline
gauge? You'd think we'd have fancy digital gauges that told us exactly how much gasoline
we put in our cars when we fill up. I noticed in 2006 when gas went through the roof that
1 gallon of gasoline sure as hell didn't go as far as it once did.
And here in Texas, if you're caught only giving 8/10's of gas when someone buys a gallon,
it's a 100 dollar fine. And if the same gas station got caught 50 times, they'd be fined
100 x 50.
The USA GOV in bed with the Gas Companies and the Car Companies?
NOOOO WAY DUUUDE.
Way.
Not only that, but egg prices at my local HEB have gone up 50%. Don't get me started on bacon. Holy schmokes, man! Eight bucks for a pound of pork bellies!?!?!
This is just insanity run amok.
My car went from 24.5 mpg to 21mpg when they added corn whiskey to the fuel.
it's great for farmers until the counter patriotic politicians screw it up.
http://covert2.wordpress.com
When you're watching your federal government telling you that it's a good idea to make motor vehicle fuel out of corn; you know you watching the third Reich in operation; no lie is too big; the people exist to be lied too; and et. cetera. All the facts are readily available; andl they don't mean shit; because the politicians believe more people will vote for them if they have this meaningless insanity than if they don't ; so you better get out there and teach them that this is not the case.