Iowa Corn Promotion Board says don’t blame us for rising food prices!

Iowa Corn Promotion Board and the Iowa Corn Growers Association are apparently going to launch a consumer-education campaign that says that they are not responsible for food prices going up.

I would partly agree, in that they are not entirely responsible. Of course oil prices, labor costs, transportation costs, etc share some of the blame. But the article ends by advocating the supposedly low extra cost of corn in order to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. [Gee thanks!! So what kind of gas guzzling truck do you drive? ] As more and more farmers switch to growing corn for biofuel rather than food production, food prices have to go up.

Ethanol producers in this country receive a tax credit of 51 cents a gallon, on top of billions of dollars in direct corn subsidies. (In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, it was $9 billion.) In Europe biodiesel subsidies can approach $2 a gallon. 

Where does the feed for chicken, pigs, and cattle come from? If farmers can get more money for sending the corn to ethanol distilleries rather than food production facilities, the economics of supply and demand would dictate that food prices would go up. Corn is used everywhere. Less corn for everyday staples, means higher costs for everyday staples.

And as the National Corn Growers Association themselves say, “Ethanol production makes huge amounts of the nation’s corn disappear”.