[neverdem]

A bit of a reach there. Not a lot of corn goes to the ME.

But a lot of wheat stopped going there due to corn ethanol subsidies.

"To be fair, not all of the food inflation can be blamed on the Fed. A good part of this problem can also be placed at the doorstep of bipartisan U.S. policies to subsidize ethanol."

"According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2001, only 7% of U.S. corn went to ethanol. By 2010, the ethanol share was 39%. So instead of growing wheat, our farmers are growing corn in order to cash in on ethanol subsidies."

Bingo! The article has great arguments against Keynesian economics, the Fed and subsidies. I'll be happy if we don't get another war.

[SunkenCiv]

There were some problems in Russia, and I forget where else (not the US) that led to wheat supplies (and barley, it says here) going shorter than expected in 2010. As always, it had zero, nothing, nada to do with corn for ethanol.

Ag prices are sensitive to petroleum prices, not the other way around.

Nice of the WSJ to shill for OPEC though. No surprise there.

• Western Organization of Resource Councils October 2002 [PDF] "The 2001 wheat crop was the lowest in 30 years. Due to lower wheat prices, U.S. wheat farmers harvested only 48,653,000 acres in 2001, yielding nearly 2 billion bushels."

Conversions I looked up; 1 metric ton = 45.9296 bushels, One Hectare = 2.47 acres:

• World Wheat, Corn, and Rice Production, 2003 (Courtesy FAO)

  Country	Maize area, ha	Maize production, Mt	Yield, Mt/ha
  United States of America	28,789,240	256,904,560	8.92
  (conversion)	71,109,422.8	11,799,523,679
  Country	Wheat area, ha	Wheat production, Mt	Yield, Mt/ha
  United States of America	21,383,410	63,589,820	2.97
  (conversion)	52,817,022.7	2,920,654,996.7
  Country	Rice area, ha	Rice production, Mt	Yield, Mt/ha
  United States of America	1,212,860	9,033,610	7.45
  (conversion)	2,995,764.2	414,910,093.86