The reverse of UN's disastrous "oil for food" program: Ethanol uses 40% of US Corn Crop

The last thing responsible for a rise in global food prices is climate change. The single largest factor however is U.S. Monetary policy,
QE2 Fuels a Global Fury (Mark Thornton, Ph.D. Economics)
“The Federal Reserve has been busy the last three months pumping up the money supply by $300 billion dollars, with much more promised in the months ahead. Some of the results have been painfully predictable, …Higher food prices set off the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the mass protests in countries like Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran. People in these countries buy more unprocessed foods and spend a much higher percentage of their income on food, so they have been severely impoverished by Bernanke’s QE2. Bernanke claims that monetary policy cannot change the quantity of wheat by one bushel and that higher food prices are the result of bad weather conditions in Russia and Australia. However, bad weather does not explain why the prices of virtually all food and nonfood commodities have increased substantially in recent recessionary times. This is clearly a case of too much money chasing too few goods.”
Food inflation and QE2: the correlation is undeniable (International Business Times)
“Experts can argue all they want about the causality relationship between food inflation and the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing (QE2). What cannot be denied, however, is the correlation. Indeed, ever since QE2 was clearly signaled by the Fed, the price of food commodities surged.”
Gotta love the government.

So it has come to this? Cornholio:ing each other.
Well, however, as a sceptic, I’ve been through worse. :-()

“work on alternate energy system that actually might work, like thorium based nuclear power.”
Exactly!
One of these two things has to be more disastrous: Global Warming or Nuclear Power Plants in the US. I wish the trillion dollars in stimulous money had gone to nuclear power instead of the stupid solar panels popping up at all the schools in California, and programming our kids with unproven global warming beliefs.

LET THEM EAT BOURBON!

“I’m drilling as fast as I can!”
And I’m backing you. Long CVX, RDS, and BEXP (Austin in Bakken).
All are great hedges against rising gasoline prices.

Curiousgeorge at March 5, 2011 at 3:38 pm
I’m not a fan of ethanol, but you should know that there are several varieties of corn specific to the end use. The corn you get for dinner is not the same as the corn you feed to cattle or chickens, and there is a specific GM variety coming on the market that is tailored for ethanol. To proclaim that we are taking food out of the mouths of people by producing corn for ethanol is simplistic at best. If you wish to refine your claim that corn produced for ethanol uses up land that would otherwise grow corn for feed or people, then I’d be ok with that. But please realize the issue is far more complex than your headline would indicate.
You are merely splitting hair, and your second last sentence suggests that even you recognize that. A long time ago (at least as long ago as 1999 – and probably even before that if one were to sift carefully through Adam Smith’s tome) it was recognized that if there is a new demand for a product of the land then it would, if anything, increase food prices. The higher the prices paid for this new product, the greater the shift of resources toward making that product rather than food. It doesn’t make a difference whether the product is edible either to man or any other species.
As noted in Wishful Thinking on Cellulosic Ethanol :

The theory is that cellulosic ethanol, which is still in the research and development phase, would be produced from non-edible plant material, e.g., switchgrasses, crop residue and other biomass that is not currently grown or used as edible crops. Thus, it is implied, it would have no effect on food prices.
But this is wishful thinking.
If cellulosic ethanol is indeed proven to be viable (with or without subsidies), what do people think farmers will do?
Farmers will do what they’ve always done: they’ll produce the necessary biomass that would be converted to ethanol more efficiently. In fact, they’ll start cultivating the cellulose as a crop (or crops). They have had 10,000 years of practice perfecting their techniques. They’ll use their usual bag of tricks to enhance the yields of the biomass in question: they’ll divert land and water to grow these brand new crops. They’ll fertilize with nitrogen and use pesticides. The Monsantos of the world — or their competitors, the start-ups — will develop new and genetically modified but improved seeds that will increase the farmer’s productivity and profits. And if cellulosic ethanol proves to be as profitable as its backers hope, farmers will divert even more land and water to producing the cellulose instead of food. All this means we’ll be more or less back to where we were. Food will once again be competing with fuel. And land and water will be diverted from the rest of nature to meet the human demand for fuel. .

The logic is the same whether biofuels are made from sweetcorn, feed corn, cellulose, a special GM variety, or whatever. Of course, what is true for land and water is also true for all the other resources that are inputs for production, namely, capital (both financial and human). But, to continue to quote from that blog:

Does this mean that biomass – and farmers — should play no role in helping us meet our energy needs? Not necessarily. If farmers can profitably grow fuel rather than food through their own efforts, so be it. But we shouldn’t favor growing one over the other either through subsidies or indirectly through government mandates for so-called renewable fuels. And if anything should be subsidized or mandated, it shouldn’t be growing fuels. That would inevitably compete with food.

Events certainly seem to vindicate this prognostication.

The federal moonshiners outdid themselves
For food in the store disappears from the shelves.
We stop exporting corn
And the hungry world scorn.
Soon we cannot supply food to ourselves.

Curiousgeorge????? Far more complex?????? Farmer has land which is suited to corn production. Farmer makes planting decision based upon revenue yield. Corn for ethanol yields more $$ than corn for food. Result: Less corn for food and thus higher price.
You may find this complex, most people don’t.

Simple solution, all grain exported outside of the US should be in exchange for crude oil.
Make this the law of the land and set the required exchange rate at one bushel of grain for each 100 barrels of crude, no exception/s f0r any reason!