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The WSJ has always hated ethanol. This just proves it. The effect of corn prices on feed is smaller than fuel prices, and if you haven't forgotten the recent fuel price surge then you should understand there was a delay before food prices shot up and it didn't have to do with the price of corn. That 10% increase was mostly due to fuel rising 200%. All of the food commodities shot up when speculators bet corn, wheat, rice(there was a shutter of rice shipments from Vietnam), and a few others. Farmers were still operating on contracts and didn't sell their crops that high.
Ethanol plants are shuttering because the price of oil dropped too low for them to break even. The 51 cent tax credit per gallon also affect oil companies. And it takes $3 a gallon for most plants to break even, maybe a little less with subsidies.
The deforestation accusation is an attack on farming as a whole. As is the effects on the runoff from farming. If they were using better techniques then we'd have less of a problem with this stuff. And California's water problems are caused by crowding in cities and using freshwater from other sources instead of building desalination plants and passing the bill onto the consumers.
Field of Dreams? Sounds more like a Dream of fields of more oil. Remember this, businessmen favor oil. It's farmers and regional businesses that depend on corn production. Ethanol doesn't need to control the whole fuel supply, it just needs to be big enough to afford R & D into more efficient technologies. Ethanol is still 5% more efficient in a gasoline tuned vehicle and it does reduce emissions by 20% over it's lifetime. It's your choice if you choke.
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-Allch Chcar
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