Don’t use food for ethanol

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By Eugene Mattecheck, Moline | Saturday, April 19, 2008 9:57 PM CDT | () comments

The price of rice is up 147 percent. Wheat prices way up, also.

The problem: Wheat and rice growers are switching from wheat and rice to corn because ethanol has driven up corn prices thus causing a wheat and rice shortage. Corn is going to ethanol instead of livestock and human feed.

Ethanol cannot be made without a subsidy, so, in effect we are paying the ethanol refiners money to use our food corn causing a corn, wheat and rice shortage.

We buy ethanol for

10 cents a gallon less than good gas but in the grocery store food prices on products made of these grains have gone up.

Washington doesn’t seem to see it. Just like the dog chasing the tail — it never seems to catch it. This mess is run like the war is run, no end in sight until the eyes get blind. Washington cannot go on forever with the see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil theory.

We have met the enemy. It is us.

Eugene Mattecheck

Moline