I just finished reading comments from The World Bank that say “…the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors (the so-called “financialization of commodities”) may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike.”
The whole time I was reading it I kept hearing the Ghostly voice of Gilda Radner, of Saturday Night Live fame saying “Nevermind.”
Her character Emily Litella was an elderly woman with a hearing problem who made regular appearances on SNL’s Weekend Updateop-ed segment in the late 1970s. Attired in a frumpy dress and sweater, Litella was introduced with professional dignity by the news anchors, who could sometimes be seen cringing slightly in anticipation of the verbal faux pas they knew would follow.
After ranting in an outraged manner, the news anchor would point out she didn’t get the point to which Gilda would reply “Nevermind.”
The World Bank’s leaked” report in 2008 erroneously blamed biofuels for 75 percent of the commodity price spike. The authors of their most recent report conclude that it is unlikely biofuels played a significant role because they do not represent a large percentage of worldwide grain and oilseed use.
It really might have been nice to know this before the World cost the nation’s family farmers dearly in terms of public trust. More importantly, they left the public thinking we should reserve our corn for human food consumption alone. Given this market is mature and our corn yields are soaring, we must look to other markets to keep farmers profitable and viable. And the markets with the most growth potential are things like ethanol, biodegradable products and other industrial uses.
“In reversing course, this World Bank report reaffirms the marginal role biofuels play in world commodity and food prices,” said RFA President Bob Dinneen. “The RFA has long noted that ethanol production has continued to increase while corn prices have now returned to normal levels. Volatile oil prices, speculation, and adverse weather conditions all played far more significant roles in driving commodity prices to record and near record prices. This report should silence critics in the food processing industry, the livestock industry, on Capitol Hill, and anywhere else that sought to portray ethanol as the boogeyman. With this phony food and fuel discussion put behind us, perhaps a real conversation about America’s energy future can ensue.”
Well put Bob but I think the cow left the barn in regard to the damage the World Bank did with their previous faux pas. I wish Emily/Gilda was still around to tell American consumers “Nevermind.”
My brother-in-law recently asked me why ethanol had a great reputation for two decades and suddenly seems to be getting pounded constantly, especially in editorial/opinion pages by the media.
He doesn’t have a farming background and isn’t invested in the ethanol industry so he is a neutral and somewhat uninformed observer. He is also one of the busiest guys I know so for him to notice it means the anti-ethanol crowd are now officially pervasive. Apparently, it’s not just me feeling paranoid.
The conversation came back to me in a hurry this week with the latest “ethanol is evil” Tsunami rolling across the country once again. It started with the Wall Street Journal (No link here because you have to pay for this tripe) and the Washington Post and worked its way across the country hitting the Chicago Tribune and Des Moines Register yesterday and likely making its way for the West Coast like some cheap traveling circus.
And like the aforementioned Circus the anti-ethanol gang leave a trail behind much like Barnum and Bailey’s elephants only there is no guy with a shovel and bucket cleaning up in their wake. They leave their load of “misinformation” to fester in the road in full knowledge that most people are also too busy to check the veracity of their propaganda.
The public lynching of ethanol began with the bogus food vs. fuel charade in 2008 and since then has continued to resurface over and over again in several different guises that get trotted out and recycled whenever opportunity presents itself.
Several things remain consistent as the attacks continue. The noxious cocktail they serve up is made with equal parts of the best bad science money can buy and poor logic. And the olive on the toothpick seems to be just plain old avarice.
That’s greed, materialism, or covetousness with a Capital “C.” The people fanning the fires of these attacks have rationale and motivation that are simple if not transparent. They are the folks that want the cheapest corn possible because it boosts their profits; want ethanol to be made from another source; or want ethanol crippled forever because the market share just got too big.
So, for the next couple of days come back here and you will get a sneak peak each day of some of these players and the Machiavellian games they play and fund all to snuff out the only real competition that imported petroleum faces in the marketplace today…ethanol.
Farming on any scale much larger than a backyard garden – even a big garden for that matter – is a business and as such it must turn a profit at the end of the day to survive, if not prosper. It doesn’t matter if you are growing corn or tomatoes. This may seem like clear logic, but in truth most urbanites don’t understand the complexities of how food is grown, processed, packaged, and transported to their door.
In our society we will spend ludicrous sums on money on things like cars, cell phones, or even a cup of trendy coffee, yet we continue to demand access to all the bounty Mother Nature has to offer at discount prices.
It is a modern miracle that the largest consumptive offenders on the planet – Americans – also have the cheapest food supply on terra firma. We spend less than 10% of our disposable income on actual food items compared to other developed nations that spend as much as 15% to 50% of what they earn to put food on the table.
There are numerous factors that make this access to cheap and abundant food possible including a wildly productive agricultural core that produces key crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans. These staple crops provide the very foundation of the “real” food pyramid. These are crops that we have learned to grow fairly predictably on a large scale even when Mother Nature hits us with challenging weather. In the worst-case scenario when weather, insects or disease reduces the size of these crops we have a certain amount in reserve.
However, with a growing emphasis on more fruits and vegetable in our diet, there are also those calling for more and more taxpayers dollars to shift from existing farm programs to encourage and expand farmers markets and produce production. Striking a reasonable balance won’t be easy but it will be critical.
While many produce items have a shelf life of weeks or months at best, corn, soybeans and wheat can be transported more readily and stored for years. The authors of the original farm bill understood this and chose to put their emphasis and limited budget into programs that help growers of these keystone crops make it through tough times.
Times have changed and the farm bill is antiquated in many ways, but the importance of these key crops has not waned. The farm bill in the U.S. is not a perfect piece of legislation, few are that have become this big and cumbersome.
But today’s “farm bill” is a misnomer since the lion’s share of the expenditures go to social programs like women, infant and children, school lunches, food stamps and even forestry. Yet critics like to cultivate the illusion that it all goes to farmers.
As we continue to analyze and discuss these consumer support programs – yes, it is a consumer program that helps guarantees you the aforementioned cheap food over the long haul – it is important we do a little homework before making wholesale changes.
In the interim keep this in mind; if we stopped growing green beans or carrots tomorrow the world would not end. But if we see big reductions in crops like corn, soybeans or wheat the loss of essential oils, protein and other precious calories would change the food universe as you know it. Likely wouldn’t do our economy or our balance of trade much good either.
Call me radical but I don’t want to eat like my grandmother, even though journalist/food activist Michael Pollan says I should. Nor do I want to “Know Your Farmer” as USDA says I should. I love farmers and have worked with them my entire life. They are some of the coolest people I know.
But I really don’t need to have a personal friendship with the specific farmer that grew the radish on my salad or the steak on my grill. I sleep well at night knowing there are thousands of family farmers and ranchers across the nation toiling to feed the masses and committed to providing abundant and safe food. And we have federal agencies as an insurance policy to make sure the system works.
I like access to all kinds of food offerings – healthy and otherwise – even when things are out of season in my part of the world. And I don’t know what Mr. Pollan’s grandma was like but mine did indeed eat lots of vegetables from the garden in season and those she canned during the long winter months. But that old sweetheart also thought starch and lard were food groups.
She also built every meal around a large slab of meat because people labored hard then and the protein was crucial to getting through the day. Society spent more time lifting, bending and swinging heavy objects than we do in today’s computer-dominated society.
So I have spent a lot of time in recent months contemplating what is driving the small but growing niche markets in our food system operating under various names like organic, local, and even slow food movements. I have finally figured out that just assuming “slow food” is for bad hunters may not be a good strategy.
Almost astonishingly, the San Francisco Chronicle offered up a really nice article discussing the trend and how it is moving across the nation. It has a number of great quotes in it that I won’t spoil here.
Although I have a personal preference for Kansas rancher Chris Wilson, president of American Agri-Women, condemning documentaries like “Food, Inc.” and “King Corn,” as “pastoral fantasies.” My guess is Chris could take Michael two out of three falls because she really works for a living.
Seriously though, it is concerning when an anti-biotech advocate, like Michael Pollan is listed as one of the top “Thinkers” of 2010 on Time Magazine’s top 100 list. In the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. and in his books Food Rules and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan, 55, does indeed tell complex stories in an engaging voice.
He has “pollanized” thousands into believing that local and organic is better, as Time states, without noting the potential pitfalls in execution, seasonality, and little things like plummeting yields.
At the end of the day this cultural evolution of food should be about consumer choice, consistency of supply and safety, and maybe even a little deference to Grandma.
An old farmer once told me “passion is good. It gets your blood moving, generates discussion, and gets you up in the morning. It also gives you a yardstick for finding a functional truth.” I guess what he meant is that if you investigate the extremes you will likely find the truth somewhere in the middle.
New jobless claims took another jump last week and unemployment for the month of March continued to be just a couple of ticks below 10 percent nationwide. That’s a whole lot of people out of work.
But it is interesting to note that four of the six states with the lowest unemployment rates are top ethanol producing states (IA, NE, SD, and KS).
The 2010 Ethanol Industry Salary Survey by Ethanol Producer Magazine, estimated that the ethanol industry is directly or indirectly responsible for almost 500,000 jobs nationwide. More than 75% of those workers earn at least $50,000 per year and virtually every one of them has health care benefits. Many of those jobs are in rural areas that have literally been revitalized by ethanol plants, as Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen noted in a January editorial in the Huffington Post. Towns like “Janesville, Minn., where a new 120 million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant is now not only the town’s largest employer, second only to the school district, but also one of the biggest property taxpayers in the county.”
These are real jobs for real people in real America. But recent studies indicate they could be lost if the ethanol tax incentives are allowed to expire at the end of the year.
A study prepared by IHS Global Insight determined that eliminating import tariffs could cost as many as 160,000 full and part-time jobs. Another study, done by the University of Missouri’s Community Policy Analysis Center, found that six states would see the largest declines in jobs due to removal of the ethanol import tariff – NE, IA, IL, MN, IN, and SD. Three of those are states that currently have unemployment levels as much as half the national average.
More research done by economist John Urbanchuk shows that even non-traditional ethanol producing states like California, Texas, Georgia, Colorado, and Tennessee would be hit by job losses due to the expiration of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). The number of jobs losses ranges from as few as 16 in Louisiana, to nearly 30,000 in Illinois.
Amazingly, the coalition that includes the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Meat Institute, and other groups representing food corporations, oil companies, environmentalists and boat manufacturers is now claiming that corn ethanol is bad for rural communities! That claim is backed up on their new website – FollowTheScience.org (or is it FollowTheMoney?) – by a single study done by AMI and the poultry industry that alleges some 5500 jobs were lost in 2008 when meat processing plants closed because ethanol made the price of feed too high. Yet the Congressional Budget Office report released in April 2009 and a recent report from the UK found that it was mainly higher oil prices that drove prices for both food and feed higher in 2008. That was proven true last year when the amount of corn used for ethanol increased from 2008, but feed and food prices went down.
At a time when America is bleeding jobs, we can’t afford to lose good ones like those created by the ethanol industry. Renewing the VEETC and the tariff will help retain those jobs – increasing the blend rate to 15 percent will help increase them. Ethanol – Real Jobs for Real People!
Chicken Little the Sky isn’t falling and if you were in a nice safe building you wouldn’t care if it was!
They say that fear may be the top motivator for mankind but I have a sneaking suspicion that guilt may be a close second with sticky and delicious Cinnabon ranking third.
With this psychological quirk in mind there are plenty of folks out there, including the Humane Society of the United States, willing to manipulate you, mislead you and even fib to you if they think you are gullible enough or your sense of guilt ripe enough.
This is evident throughout our society and the marketing chain today. Examples abound:
Numerous food manufacturers are removing corn sweeteners from food items despite legions of dieticians saying cane sugar, honey, HFCS et al…are virtually identical and over eating is the culprit;
Petroleum companies tell us using more ethanol will result in the ruination of rainforests in South America despite evidence statistical evidence to the contrary;
The Humane Society of the United States tells us cage-free eggs – those from free roaming chickens – are better for us and the chickens. Take note foxes and weasels…dinner is on the way.
The chicken conundrum seems to be the most salient issue to discuss this week given the Humane Society of the United State’s latest gambit in Iowa trying to expose the horrors of poultry and egg production. It is getting to be a tired tactic. Get gritty video that is unrepresentative of poultry or livestock operations and put it on the evening news. Then ask for donations to lobby. It is no accident that HSUS has legions of lawyers rather than scientists or animal experts.
Cages free eggs are not all they are cracked up to be, Dean Kleckner, former head of the American Farm Bureau Federation, pointed out in a commentary in the Des Moines Register this week.
“As it turns out, however, this “cage-free” environment is no poultry paradise for the chickens, either. When chickens are crowded together, rather than separated into cages, they peck each other incessantly. It’s animal instinct – an avian attempt to establish a social hierarchy – a behavior we describe as a “pecking order.”
These animal welfare radicals – because that is indeed what HSUS is beneath a thin veneer of puppies - miss niceties like climate control, sanitation, better health and safer products that result from modern livestock production techniques. Reality doesn’t fit their vegetarian agenda. This is just the most recent example of the new reality that has entered the marketplace.
“On topics like health and wellness – environmental sustainability is another – the market climate is changing in terms of regulation and mainstream public opinion, and any brand that considers itself a leader has to play a part in that change process. The threat is to be left behind, looking like the bad guy that people feel increasingly guilty about buying,” Tim Riches, chief growth officer, Asia-Pacific, at FutureBrand.
I think Riches’s sentiment applies to agricultural production and family farmers as well. We must absorb and address this trend or go with the flow and pay the consequences such as fewer family farms and ranches, less domestic food output, and more reliance on other nations for our sustenance as well as our fuel, cars, washing machines, etc…
Chicken Little“” is a story for teaching courage. Don’t be a chicken little. Don’t be afraid. The sky is not falling. Everyone in farming needs to take courage and tell consumers the real story before it is too late.
A new report commissioned by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) discovered what corn farmers and ethanol producers were saying all along – it was an on-going drought coupled with high oil prices that caused the so-called food crisis of 2007/2008 – not ethanol.
“Available evidence suggests that biofuels had a relatively small contribution to the 2008 spike in agricultural commodity prices,” the report concludes, noting that those who blamed ethanol for the food price hikes were too quick to condemn. “Studies which have found a large biofuel impact across agricultural commodities have often considered too few variables, relied on statistical associations or made unrealistic or inconsistent assumptions.”
The ultimate reasons for the spike in food prices, according to the report, were rapidly declining global wheat stocks caused by ongoing drought, exacerbated by countries imposing export restrictions on grains, combined with the simultaneous spike in crude oil prices to record levels.
The report also made clear that oil prices played a significant role in driving agricultural costs up. “Fuel and fertiliser account for over half of operating costs of crop farms but many commentators have ignored oil’s ongoing importance as an input into agricultural production.” No kidding! Corn farmers were desperately trying to make that point at the time, but no one was listening.
Going forward, the report is very optimistic about the world’s ability to respond to both demand for biofuels and the need for additional cropland citing vast amounts of under utilized agricultural reserves around the world. According to the report, there are “still vast reserves of under-utilised land in Europe and elsewhere in the world which can be brought into production under the stimulus of increased demand. It is estimated that there are 10 million hectares of land currently idle in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which are likely to be brought into production if agricultural prices rise. Likewise, the arable lands of eastern and central Europe are still producing at well below their full capacity.” Whoa! What about indirect land use change?
It is a “better late than never” vindication for corn ethanol which was made the scapegoat for higher food prices at the time. Now that food prices have moderated (along with gas prices, coincidentally) probably no one will care.
The economy is still suffering, unemployment is still high – but Americans can still afford to eat and eat well.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, retail food prices at the supermarket decreased for the fifth consecutive quarter and are significantly lower than one year ago.
The informal “marketbasket” survey shows the total cost of 16 food items that can be used to prepare a meal was $42.90, down $3.13 from the third quarter of 2009 and $7.31 lower or about 15 percent less compared to one year ago.
Fifteen percent less than a year ago. Why are there no big news stories about LOWER food prices like the ones we saw when they were HIGHER? Is it just because good news is boring? This is GREAT news! We should be shouting it from the rooftops. According to USDA, Americans spend just under 10 percent of their disposable annual income on food, the lowest average of any country in the world. Why doesn’t anyone care about that? This is the greatest achievement of this great nation. And the people who are responsible for that, America’s farmers and ranchers, get no credit for it and instead are criticized.
It should also be duly noted that this great decline in food prices during 2009 came at the same time that ethanol production hit yet another record level. It seems there is no food versus fuel issue after all. But, as soon as food prices go back up again due to increased energy prices or some other problem, you can expect to see that argument resurrected.
Good thing that farmers are not in this business for the glory of it.
Blake Hurst, the plain speaking and thought provoking farmer from Missouri, is back in The American today providing us all with ample reason to say thanks to farmers as we prepare to load on the turkey tomorrow.
Hurst pulls back the invisible curtain that separates today’s consumers from the real workings of a family farm in a fun and meaningful way that is worth a read and worth sharing with your friends.
“I had to laugh at a recent Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times, in which he had traveled back to his family’s farm in Oregon and was remembering how it was when he was a boy. But that idyllic time is lost, all lost, and Kristof concluded that farms have lost their soul. Or at least “industrial” farms operate at a soul deficit. I don’t know exactly what Kristof meant by the loss of soul. Reading what others write about agriculture, I sometimes think that what others see as “soul,” we farmers remember as grinding poverty and isolation. Does the fact that I follow the grain markets on my iPhone imply a loss of soul? If so, then this “soul” business is all cabbage, and the hell with it. Kristof and others constantly romanticize the life they imagine we live, or used to live, and I wouldn’t trade it for any other. But it can be as sharp as a serpent’s tooth. But if he means a family, working together from dawn till dusk to bring the harvest in, a place where love and affection and forbearance bind the workers together, then soul still exists, and we’ve got plenty of it.”
Yes, the old scenic barns still dot the countryside. But they often stand in the shadow of large metal buildings. They may lack the warm fuzzy-feelings of Americana but are far better adapted to house the large, technology-laden machines that still allow family farms to produce our food, feed and fuel that we rely on but often take for granted.
The aforementioned large equipment, satellite technology, computerized grain monitors, and modern grain dryers are all part of the tool box that allows family operations to survive and occasionally prosper. And make no mistake, American consumers recognize the value of these operations and plainly state this is a food production system worth valuing and protecting.
“If the movie “Food, Inc.” can be said to have a theme, it is that corn is too cheap. Cheap corn has led to industrial uses, cheap fast food, and, horror of horrors, corn fed to cows. This year’s harvest is bad news for documentary makers, because we’re bringing in a tremendous crop. Corn prices are at two-year lows. Author of Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser’s pain is palpable, but a big harvest should be a cause for celebration for everyone else. Farmers make the news when weather causes low yields and high prices, but plentiful and reasonably priced food is such a given that nobody but we farmers celebrates a great crop like this one. The rest of America should celebrate, and be grateful for the abundance that agriculture provides.”
So this Thanksgiving as you push you chair away from the table with a full belly be grateful for hard working American family farmers. And be careful about swallowing the load of bull that some agenda-driven elitists are trying to feed the public. Happy Thanksgiving!
Oh, Anthony Bourdain. The “Bad Boy” of food, the one who has eaten fresh seal slain by Inuit and laid out on a kitchen floor that looked like a bloody crime scene. You’re such a rebel with your cigarettes and booze; you’ve turned the world of celebrity chefs upside down with your wacky adventures into far flung places.
You have been developing a following from real America because you openly criticize these elitist chefs on the Food Channel. You have written in your own blog about the sanctimoniousness of chefs such as Alice Waters and the granola hippies in San Francisco.
Before you arrived in Columbus to speak this weekend you did an interview with Alive magazine spouting off about the audaciousness of the word “foodie” and openly disagreeing with the likes of Michael Pollan and Alice Waters—or, as you’ve called her, Saint Alice.
But then you just turned out to be another wimp who bailed on your conviction and on family farmers when it got too hot in the kitchen.
At your show, when I asked you what you think of self proclaimed experts like Pollan and Waters, you pandered to your audience of about 400 people and criticized modern farming practices.
When asked about the dynamic duo of the foodie movement you changed the subject to putting down the food industry for using High Fructose Corn Syrup (farmers don’t delegate where their crops go). The crowd booed … it was like the Maury Povich Show for food snobs.
I defended the corn industry, saying corn sweeteners are the same as sugar, everything in moderation. And I got more boos than a visiting football team at Ohio Stadium (minus the large crowd).
What a hypocrite. In a recent blog you publically state there is plenty to sneer about in San Francisco because the Bay is “pretty much the epicenter of so many of my most cherished aversions: political correctness, veganism, rich hippies, sanctimoniousness about food, food fetishism, animal rights terrorists, gastro-dogma, and loud locavores who actually get their produce flown in from Chino Farms in San Diego.”
In closing, I have this to say to the so-called Bad Boy: if you say something, stick to it. Don’t pander to the audience and become the sell out that you claim Rachel Ray is now.
By setting out on a tour of the United States and speaking to crowds for about, oh, 20 minutes for $50.00 to $100.00 dollars a seat makes me think that you’re a sellout.
As for the blogger who attended Bourdain’s show and later called me a “dolt from the corn industry.” I represent family farmers, the same folks who feed you with little regard for you ignorance and arrogance.
I just finished reading comments from The World Bank that say “…the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors (the so-called “financialization of commodities”) may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike.” 
The 
“Available evidence suggests that biofuels had a relatively small contribution to the 2008 spike in agricultural commodity prices,” the report concludes, noting that those who blamed ethanol for the food price hikes were too quick to condemn. “Studies which have found a large biofuel impact across agricultural commodities have often considered too few variables, relied on statistical associations or made unrealistic or inconsistent assumptions.”
According to the 