Reply #45: got numbers to back that up? [View All]

Trust me, I'm no fan of corn-based ethanol. But I heard recently that only 8% of the corn crop goes to human food. The majority goes to.. what then? Animal feed. High fructose corn syrup. Plastics and fabrics. Heat. Lots of stuff. I honestly don't know, and I am not trying to provoke a fight with you. But I don't think biofuels are the Great Evil they're being made out to be. I personally think high fructose corn syrup is a much greater "enemy" than ethanol. What good does HFCS do? Makes our children _and adults_ temporarily hyper, then depressed, and causes weight gain. (rant, rant, rant...)

Here's a curious note: According to the Wikipedia entry on maize (nee corn), the entry, January 2008, of maize among the commercial agreements of NAFTA caused "the price of maize in Mexico fell 70% between 1994 and 2001." That had a direct impact on Mexican farmers. And now, seven to fourteen years later, the price of corn has spiked. What causes this spiking of food prices? I wager it's not just one thing. Yes, demand for corn that goes into corn-based ethanol production will have an impact. But it's not alone. Could it be the speculators that drive our ever-fair and not-harming-anyone capitalist markets? Who says it's not them?