There was some astonishment among rural economy watchers when reports began hitting the presses that a respected USDA economist, Keith Collins, had conducted a study saying ethanol production had driven food prices up 30 percent.
Well, it turns out, that’s not quite what the study actually said.
Collins reported that ethanol production had been a factor in the increasing price of corn, which does have an impact on other food prices, especially poultry and pork. He put the ethanol impact at about 1.8 percent of a 4.3 percent rise in food prices.
Mike Woolverton, grain marketing economist with Kansas State University Research and Extension, said some mainstream media — including some with considerable influence in Congress — were just a tad math challenged when they converted those numbers into a 30 percent increase.
Collins’ numbers are actually pretty much in line with those reported by K-State for months. And Woolverton said future impacts on food prices are also being grossly overestimated.
Collins’ complete study is still available to read on the Farm Journal website.
13 Comments
Now P.J., as brilliant as you are in book learning, you know that driving up food prices is only one of the myriad of problems caused by ethanol manufacturing particularly here in relatively dry Kansas.
One is that without government subsidies, no ethanol manufacturer would even consider producing that product.
Two, here in Kansas, many of us who are life long loyal Kansans see the hand writing on the wall. Pumping the water needed for ethanol and associated irrigation is draining our relatively pristine deep underground water aquifers. This will evenually lead to tremendous drinking water shortages in Kansas as are now being experienced in other states.
Furthermore, draining the aquifers will lead to obtaining our drinking water from the already turgid, polluted surface rivers such as the Arkansas River and other surface rivers that run any length through Kansas.
In the last couple years, our ill-informed Sedgwick County commissioners allowed Sedgwick County trash to be hauled to the new Harper County landfill which will eventually poison the picturesque, free flowing Chikaskia River.
The Chikaskia River begins not far away, somewhere south of Cunningham near the fabled St. Leo, Kansas, where it begins in a jumble of old Budweiser beer kegs from the St. Leo Catholic church. Its said Chikaskia River water has a slight taste of stale beer from those old wooden kegs which feed the giant channel catfish along there. Now the Budweiser taste will be traded for the taste of fresh garbage from Sedgwick County.
I GUESS ETHANOL MANUFACTURING IS FOLLOWING THE OLD LAW … THAT IS, THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.
Forget it Wink. She’s an ethanol shill. So far in the tank she’s hopeless.
Gee, Farm Journal and KState agree with big ag?
heheheheh. Who’d a thought?
Wink, I’ve got a hundred dollar bill that says she NEVER writes anything critical of ethanol.
Why the vitriol against P.J.? KSFARMGRRL sounds like a frustrated sapphic treehugger who couldn’t find her way out of a ethanol tank with a flashlight and a ladder.
P.J. is a newsgatherer. She disseminates the latest news with flair and efficiency. So you have a problem with the way the government is handling ethanol production and rising food prices and all the other economically challenging factors that impact Kansas farmers and the economy? Fine — but stop shooting the messenger.
I don’t always agree with the stories, but I respect the reporting. Try reserving your comments for the news itself, or perhaps challenge the government or researcher perspectives. Constantly attacking a reporter is sophomoric and belies your lack of understanding.
sapphic? hehehehehehehehehehehheeeeeee!
Now where did THAT come from? Not from any of these ethanol threads….
So… all the news about ethanol is positive? No negatives? Only in PJ’s world. Let’s call it what it is. Shilling.
Heheheheheheheheh.
What color is the sky in YOUR world?
If this was truly a news gathering and reporting deal, uh, that would include BOTH sides, no?
But since it’s only ONE side she promotes, and even defends, I think that’s the very definition of shilling.
PS, still got that hundred dollar bill waiting for something not so positive about ethanol…
In my view the jury is still out on corn-ethanol. Inputs of fertilyzer and irrigation for corn, coupled with ‘wear and tear’ on the soil may well exceed the output in fuel.
In and area like Iowa where it rains more it might make more sense.
I’m looking forward to cellulosic ethanol – especially if it can be done from trash.
Is P.J. Griekspoor an editorial writer or reporter for the Wichita EAGLE?
The EAGLE normally stresses the difference as though an invisible line or wall separates the two overall activities. At the Wichita EAGLE, editorial writers are actually physically separated from news reporters who reside in a large noisy, clattering news room.
Would Phil Brownlee, lead editorial writer, run out onto Douglas and interview participants in say a truck and city bus collision? Or would Brownlee cooly maintain an aloof gentlemen’s distance in his role as EAGLE editorial writer? I suspect the latter.
But what is the standard in regard to the blogs maintained by the EAGLE? Should Brownlee and other EAGLE opinion writers continue to honor their role as editorial writers and not reporters? After all computer blogs are a different medium from newspapers.
By the same token, should we, the Wichita EAGLE readers and WE Bloggers expect EAGLE reporters to honor the traditional separation and continue to write news articles giving both sides of the story. And tell the old “where, when, who, and what really happened”? Should EAGLE reporters continue as news presenters when participating in the blogs, particularly the “BUSINESS CASUAL” blog?
If so, is the learned P.J. Grieksmoor, one of the EAGLE’s environmental writers, stepping over the line separating editorial/opinion writers from the coldly dispassionate, two-sided news reporters?
I’m sorry … I don’t know the answer.
Since we are unlikely to get anything even REMOTELY objective from the WE’s ethanol shill… a little information for balance. Thanks to annie moose.
“Critical of ethanol?
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html
The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30″
Uh, gee. If ethanol is so freakin’ wonderful, how come the free market cant support it?
your tax dollars at work…
Well, thank you KSfarmgirl, for that timely, objective bit of reading. A 1995 paper citing statistics from 1979 and predicting what dire consequences might arise by 2000. All brought to you from the highly objective, non-agenda pushing Cato Institute.
Good point about attacking the messenger. That is not productive, it does not add to the understanding of the subject, and it is not even interesting reading. Several of the people who post to these blogs have a good intellect and it shows in their writing. Let’s hear more from those people.
Has it occurred to anyone that the reports used by the anti-ethanol people usually contain data which is not consistent with mainstream research? When a K-State authority refers to them as “math-challenged”, isn’t that noteworthy? There has to be something more relevant than using a 13-year old study based on 30-year old data.
Here is a challenge for P.J. As mentioned earlier here, there are several dimensions to the ethanol issue. Each of the issues gets mixed in with the discussions on any one subject so that the original subject gets lost. How about doing an article on each of the separate issues; energy in/out, cost in/out, the role of subsidy, food cost, and water?
Good idea buswriter. I would also make a differentiation regarding irrigated corn vs ‘rain-watered’ corn.
It would also be interesting to see an article on the current state of R&D on cellulosic ethanol. I’m sure ICM could give a good update there.
Good idea. Lets add R&D to the list. ICM is working not only on the cellulosic idea, but with developing the by-products of the process into marketable products. I understand that the prototype plant in St. Joseph expects to collect as much revenue from the previously discarded by-products as from the ethanol by itself. Are you listening, P.J.?
And the next step. It is my understanding that the facility planned for Harvey County will use recycled waste water. Now if it can also use cellulosic trash it could be a great development.