Trading Food for Ethanol, and going backwards
by Glen Boudreaux
Jolie Vue Farms, Brenham, Texas
Do you find it discouraging that government programs that start out with all good intentions seem always to morph into perpetual boondoggles? Is there a better example of that than the Farm Bill?
Protection of farmers through various schemes has a long history in our country, but it made the big time following World War II. The Allies had not only bombed but starved the Germans and Japanese into submission. Our leaders said, properly so, never let it happen to us. Made sense, don't you think? Thus began the era of the big, subsidized farming corporations.
Now Congress is about to authorize a 5 year, $300 billion bill, full of welfare for people that do not need it. They do not need the money because the government had already mandated increased volumes of corn farming to provide for the production of ethanol gasoline. Our representatives have quadrupled the mandate in the new bill, even though it has been demonstrated that the energy inputs necessary to produce ethanol make it a zero-sum game.
Zero-sum only in the fuel game, however. As farming has increased the production of corn in order to capture the rapid rise in price, it has pushed out land that had been devoted to wheat, beans, and rice, so of course the price of those staples increase as their supply decreases.
There you have it - a farm bill that reduces the food supply while making it more expensive. We should call it the Farm-No-Food bill.
Truman, Marshall, and Eisenhower must be rolling over in their graves. Oh well...
Yours in the local harvest,
Glen Boudreaux
replies to: boboud@aol.com
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