Corn Prices and Ethanol Making Top Ten News Lists

With the end of the year at hand the obligatory lists of the top news stories of the year are starting to pop up and a weird year for corn and ethanol is making many of them, at least in the Midwest.

The Des Moines Register places ethanol problems at number three on the list and the effect of rising and falling corn prices on the farm economy at number six.

In Ohio, corn prices and the ethanol “bust” placed fifth and sixth for top agriculture stories. Grand Island, Nebraska ranked ag price volatility eighth and ethanol at number ten in overall news stories for the area. The Associated Press ranked VeraSun’s failure as the number 8 news story of the year for South Dakota. The number nine business story in the Twin Cities was agricultural prices.

And the number one story in Fergus Falls, MN – as judged by website readers – was the story of a Canadian motorcyclist who suffered minor injuries after wiping out on I-94 after hitting a pile of corn mash spilled by a truck that had just left the nearby ethanol plant. Why, you may ask. “Maybe it was because the story had a little bit of everything: spot news, hooks to draw in national motorcycle safety and ethanol groups, and enough oddness to get people talking.”