Is the rise in price of corn and wheat due to these crops being sold for hybrid energy?

Question

Yahoo news reports as follows:

WILLMAR, Minn. - The steepest run-ups in food prices since 1990 are hurting grocery shoppers, restaurants and school cafeterias but they're making others rich.

The winners in the new food economy include crop farmers selling corn and wheat for near-record highs after years of crushingly low prices

Answer 1

Yes, that's the problem.

The solution? build more d**n oil refineries!!

Answer 2

Yea thats what I heard too The third world countries that grow it can hardly afford to buy it for their families. It makes you think doesn't it? Every way we turn does harm. They say not to buy food from 100000miles away but then the people that earned a penny to survive from growing it get nothing!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 3

Correct.

What you know for ETHANOL is just giving food to a car.

In other words, they take a meal away from a human being and give it to a machine...

Vote for Mc Cain, he is against it. Because he knows the value of food. He was a Prisoner of War for 5 years.

Answer 4

yep yep yep.. and food is just the biggining..

as a homebrewer i can tell you hops has quadrupled.. be prepared for beer to get expensive..

as a texan i can tell you that a LOT of what used to be cotton fields are now corn fields!!!!

just wait till beef prices get hit.... corn and hay are standard feeds for beef... corn is catapulting in price.. and a lot of what used to be wheat fields are now corn fields.....

most people have no clue how much of their food is derived from corn..

it sugars your drink sweetens your canned goods.. and is fed to almost every protein you eat or pet; from dogs to pigs to catfish

Answer 5

No. But they are a factor. At the moment most forms of grains are at high price levels. This is down to a number of factors.

In no specific order

A number of grain producing countries have seen lower yields due to poor growing weather, conflict the loss of agricultural land to development, loss of agricultural workers to urban migration, and due to the increased growing of low yield grains (especially rice) that fetch higher market prices.

The transition of grain growing land to cash crops such as cotton (very noticeable in China) and for canola/rapeseed for cooking oil and cosmetics (also a cash crop).

As Asia becomes wealthier there is an increase in demand for grains and grain products for food.

As Asia becomes wealthier there is an increase in the demand for meat, which in turn creates increased demand for grain and grain products to feed livestock.

Poor agricultural planning by Western countries. Namely their over dependence on imported grain, and their own domestic reduction in grain growing.

Bio fuels.

Answer 6

absolutely correct.

$5 or more per bushel for corn, was like 2.25 per bushel like four years ago.

$11 per bushel for soybeans.

all going for ethanol.

however the farmers don't break even unless they are making atleast $3 per bushel on corn now due to rising fuel costs, rising fertilizer costs and rising costs to rent the farmland.



in southern minnesota good farmland is renting for like 165 dollars per acre per year.

Answer 7

that is some of the problem, but most of the price run-ups you see in consumer food products are due to higher gas prices which make transportation costs skyrocket

Answer 8

does this make sense to you. gasoline when burned yields a lot of heat,it's this potential energy that makes it so valuable ,now here's the question...... does it make sense to use high heat fuel(gasoline),to produce corn to yield alcohol  that produces less heat,you will need to burn 2-3 times as much alcohol as you would gasoline to move your car the same distance .it's just a con to use up all that corn and keep the price up,it's never going to compete with gas consumption,and with so many people starving in the world,how can we justify converting food to fuel?you choose............tom

Answer 9

Ethanol from Corn is the dumbest idea yet pursed by this country. Yes its great that farmers are rich these days and we are importing less oil because of it.

But the after effects are creating inflation pressure on other parts of the economy. Like Food... Something that everybody needs for life.



We need cellulose ethanol ASAP...  Ethanol produced from grass clippings and such is the future..

Answer 10

no...its b/c last yr's harvest was not that good and this yr's harvest is about to get under way so the prices went up b/c of a low supply but as soon as the harvest gets under way analysts believe it will lower the price.