I have an objective outlook unlike corn farmers who are knee deep in government mandates and subsidies. There is a growing (no pun intended) conflict between fuel and food. We have never had fuel mandates, especially the huge size of these mandates. The impact of the fuel mandates is difficult to determine. In the short run, ethanol mandates along with other factors (global demand, oil prices, and weak dollar) are leading to strong inflationary pressure.
The increase in future corn production is heavily driven by ethanol mandates and subsidies. Making corn more attractive to produce than other crops has already had many negative side effects. You could apply your argument to any good or service. Simply have government provide huge mandates and subsidies to shift demand. Government mandates and subsidies of the ethanol size will have many negative long-term impacts on any good or service.
I find the ethanol mandates and subsidies ironic. I have never read anything that indicates corn-based ethanol will ever be a viable alternative to petroleum. Somehow the ethanol mandates have been justified on the basis of some future biofuel source that will be economically viable. Bottom line: corn-based ethanol is a fraud with huge negative economic repurcussions in the short-term and long-term.
No doubt, but you haven’t the insight of what makes a farmer a farmer. That's where the real difference and motivation is.
The recent jump in prices has whetted the appetites of farmers who have never had the opportunity to do what they have yearned to do since they were little boys, grow the biggest damn crop that piece of ground has ever produced.
There are but a handful of farmers who know what it’s like to farm without some government official telling them they are raising too big of a crop.
98% of farmers today have only farmed under the thumb of the government. Those chains may be falling away, and the results will be crops the likes of which the world has never seen before.
We have never had fuel mandates, especially the huge size of these mandates.
We have had similar fuel mandates since the early 80’s. At that time the mandate was MTBE or Ethanol. Most companies, unsurprisingly chose their own MTBE over ethanol.
. The increase in future corn production is heavily driven by ethanol mandates and subsidies.
The subsidies are useless at this point, there isn’t enough money in subsidies for farmers to use them.
I find the ethanol mandates and subsidies ironic. I have never read anything that indicates corn-based ethanol will ever be a viable alternative to petroleum.
They will lead to other crops that will produce ethanol more efficiently than corn does, or strains of corn will be engineered to produce ethanol more efficiently, or corn will be grown more efficiently than it currently is. In the short term, my bet is on the latter.
Although we’ve seen big increases in yields, the increases in the next years will dwarf everything that’s happened so far. We are commonly seeing 200+ bushel corn today. That was rare only 15 years ago. Soon even that will be history. Farmers, feeling their freedom will be blowing by 300 bushels in no time (It’s already occurred, it just isn’t common) and 400 bushels is only a short time behind that.
Demands by farmers for genetically engineered corn with a focus on ethanol production has been heard by the seed companies, and corn with better ethanol yields is already entering the system.