THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES HITS BIOFUELS - ETHANOL

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES HITS BIOFUELS:

“This should be a shock to nobody but the Greens.

Ever since the beginning of the ethanol mandate it was obvious to anybody with eyes to see that the whole thing was a boondoggle and a huge waste for everybody except ADM.  What the Greens failed to understand is that if you prop up corn prices by buying, distilling and burning massive amounts of corn whisky in cars, two things are going to happen.  One the price is going to go up, making things like cow feed and other uses of corn more expensive  and 2. farmer are going to, without restraints, plant ever larger amounts of corn, which will

1. push out other crops like wheat and

2. require more land use to plant even more corn. 

Which is why you can now go from Eastern Colorado to Western NY and essentially see nothing but corn.  Millions of acres of corn, across the country, grown to burn.  Somehow this was supposed to be environmentally friendly?”

Well, it’s a nice 21st century enviro-twist on the even more devastating boondoggles of FDR’s New Deal, which in order to prop up agricultural prices “restricted production to keep prices high.

‘Excess’ output was destroyed or dumped abroad.

While millions of Americans were going hungry, the government plowed under 10,000,000 acres of crops, slaughtered 6,000,000 pigs, and left fruit to rot,” as Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute wrote, and Amity Shlaes similarly explored in the Forgotten Man.
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

57Posted at 12:43 pm by Ed Drisco