Time to start planning next years gardens and methods.
It's becoming clearer every day. We are being shown what is behind the
curtain and i think it has reached the point that the wizard doesn't
care that he is exposed.
No need to worry about contaminated beef, we won't be able to afford it
much longer. Many won't be able to afford enough food period, and that
is in the rich nations. Looks like a plan to me, a plan that has been
unfolding for many years. GM crops fit in wonderfully with all this.
Damn, I wish I was wrong about all that I fear, perhaps I am. Perhaps
I am just another tin-foil-hatter that needs medicating.
You may have been right with the hubris remark, Billy.
Charlie
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age
of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
Adam Smith
-------------------------------------
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aidi33
Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly
by Charles E. Carlson
Global Research, September 29, 2007
eshop.whtt.org
Eight years of Biofuels (ethanol) policy and legislation has cemented
in place the first world wide food cabal, which promises a humanitarian
disaster, a famine more serious than those caused by any tsunami,
earthquake or drought. This crisis is not in the dim future, it is
here.
Congress has, in a series of acts passed in this millennium, handed the
perfect monopoly to what appears to be few giant agribusiness companies
that already have enormous economic power, but which may be a much
broader cabal.
If you can afford $6.00 a gallon for milk, $4.00 for a loaf of bread
and still have money left over for a $50.00 steak at Outback, you may
be prepared for 2008, but what about the future? Even if you and I may
think we are prepared financially to buy food, whatever the cost, we
must have concern for the billion souls who are not and who are
condemned to starvation by the corn-to-alcohol conversion scheme.
Subsidies do not make the giant agribusiness firms criminals, only
opportunists. Their Public Relations distortion about the value of
grain alcohol as fuel is criminal. Congressmen are the real cheats, for
they could acknowledge this if they wanted to, but they do not, so they
share in the crimes—grand theft and murder by starvation. This being a
“Christian” society, it falls to those who heed Jesus Christ’s repeated
admonitions to feed the needy and protect those who cannot protect
themselves to stop corn-to-alcohol conversion. Make no mistake this is
a moral issue.
Many of us Americans still think we have a layer of financial fat and
can afford a doubling or tripling of food costs without going hungry.
Not so in the third world, and with some in America as well. A friend
reminded me, "Meat is not good for us anyway." Some would not mind
giving up meat sometimes, but in Darfur or Uganda, there may be no meat
or luxury foods to give up. When the price of rice or corn, or beans
rises suddenly by a third or half, many will go without. This recently
happened in Mexico City with corn tortilla shells; in the third world,
the price of corn may be the difference between life and death.
Commodity markets are now world markets, when price of corn rises in
Chicago the impact is felt in India and Russia.
Engineering a food monopoly
Political leaders of both parties have appropriated billions of dollars
to subsidize major agribusiness corporations to destroy food; the
latest appropriation was $14 billion. They call the process “bio-fuel”
or ethanol production, but because the amount of fuel produced is less
than the amount of fuel it takes to produce it, the only correct term
for the process is systematic destruction of the food consumed in the
process. Agribusiness giants include Archer Daniels Midland, whose
income was $44 billion last year, are subsidized to burn up America’s
surplus food (mostly corn), while they carry out their principle
business, marketing the remaining food which is made more scarce,
expensive, and profitable in the process. Congress has created over us
the first nearly foolproof, open-ended, food monopoly. This finacial
scam is to big and too well sheltered not to come from the highest
level of banking and politics.
Corn is the most abundant readily storable and amazingly cheap basic
foodstuff, and it is being wasted in an age when millions of grain
eaters face starvation for lack of vegetable calories. Darfur is only
one of many well-publicized examples in central and southern Africa
where corn (maize) is a staple but will not grow because of a water
shortage. Darfur needs imported grain, not occupation…food and water
will solve its problem armies can. But when the price of commodities go
up the quantity of gifts to the poor go down simply because we all
define what we give in dollars, not pounds of food, and our dollars buy
less food.
The corn-to-alcohol scheme may well be the largest single financial
crime of all time in its impact on people. Its cost to consumers in
higher food prices, disregarding the direct subsidies, will exceed the
total cost of the so-called war in Iraq, plus the cost of the escalated
oil prices. It will dwarf the cost of every war, going back and
including Vietnam and World Wars II and I. It will even exceed the cost
of the oil increase to $81.00 per barrel. There cannot be a bigger
issue than food. No problem in America comes close to it in importance,
because no one can escape depending on food for survival -- and we are
talking about doubling or tripling its cost of basic grain commodities
on which the non-rich survive.
The problem we will expose in this brief paper is not a natural one
like drought, tidal wave or earthquake. It is totally man-made for the
profit of a few, and it is based on a preposterous, proven lie--that
ethanol is a good fuel to burn in autos. The Ethanol subsidy is "take
from the poor and give to the rich," scheme. A humanitarian food crisis
is a moral issue requiring us to act in the interest of those who
cannot act for themselves. Men of faith should lead.
The perpetual ethanol boondoggle started with laws passed by Congress
to subsidize the fermenting of corn and other foods to create grain
alcohol, which was supposed to burn in cars instead of fossil fuel to
reduce “global warming” and to save precious natural fuel, or so we are
told. It is every bit as evil a scheme as if it forced all of us to
drink the 13 billon gallons of “white lightning” now being produced
from corn in America. (1)
Ethanol, known as grain alcohol, was in a diluted and impure fprm
called "moonshine" or “white lightning” in the long past years called
“Prohibition.” Ethanol has many chemical uses and certain medical
properties, but a fuel to run autos it is not, poor in performance,
expensive to make, difficult to transport, all well documented by
qualified scientific experts.
We will introduce a few whose scientific works explain that corn to
ethanol has been an unworkable scam from the very start and exists only
because consumers are forced to subsidize it. Those who predicted that
ethanol was an economic farce and it would never be economical have
been vindicated. What too few foresaw was how bio-fuels were in fact a
scam to bring basic food commodities under monopoly price control.
We Hold These Truths believe rising food costs and controlled and
engineered world famine may well be a planned results of ethanol
legislation. Our conclusions are not based on complex scientific
evidence, though such evidence has been available for years, and is too
obvious to have been overlooked at the top. Common sense and the simple
laws of the marketplace are our guides, and there is no better place to
begin than at the filling station.
If you look at the gas pump, you’ll see a little sign: “Contains 15%
(or 10%) ethanol.” So, if your tank holds 20 gallons and you fill it
for a total cost of $50.00, three of the 20 gallons you pump into the
tank are grain alcohol made from corn. One study tells us the subsidy
to those who make ethanol cost taxpayers $2.21 per gallon of fossil
fuel replaced, or $6.63 for three gallons. (The lowest estimate of
direct subsidies we find is $.51 per gallon, or $1.53 for your three
gallons of alcohol.) This subsidy is over and above the $7.50 you pay
for the three gallons of alcohol you pumped into your tank, which will
not take you as far as the fuel farmers burned to raise the corn that
went into the alcohol! No wonder agribusiness wants to build more
plants and distill more corn into alcohol. The three gallons of ethanol
are distilled from about 70 pounds of corn that would otherwise have
been converted into beef, chicken, eggs, milk, pork or catfish. Corn
would and does sustain human life quite nicely as a main staple for
those who cannot afford meat, eggs, or milk.
USA Agribusiness already claims to have the capacity to produce about
13.5 billion gallons of ethanol, which will result in the destruction
of over 5 billion bushels of corn. Its capacity is skyrocketing,
because the more corn agribusiness destroys, the more subsidies they
“earn”. Agribusiness spokesmen have voiced plans to consume 25% of the
country’s approximate 1.4 billion bushel corn harvest; the price of
corn in the marketplace clearly tells us the scheme has already
effectively dried up most of the corn reserves…it is likely that we
will discover that there are no longer significant grain reserves in
the USA.
Starvation is the issue
Grain alcohol, or “white lightning” as it was once called, is reputed
to have driven many to insanity. It is your author’s terrible vision
that the monopoly created to make it will drive many Americans out of
the middle class, and it will condemn many millions of third world
children to starvation. Huge as the subsidy to grain alcohol distilling
is, it is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg; it is this hidden
effect that concerns We Hold These Truths--the impact on world food
availability, an issue rarely discussed. The enormous, unjustifiable
subsidies to agribusiness may not bring famine, but the food shortage
that results from food burning for profit will bring famine and slow
starvation. Those who have food will control those who do not. This
shortage of food will profit agribusiness just as the shortage of oil
from the shutdown of Iraq is benefiting big oil now.
Burning food—technically, distilling grain to grain alcohol--was
mandated by Congress, probably because they were lobbied by US
agribusiness, and no one objected. It was well known that ethanol
burned inefficiently in our autos, could not solve the energy problem,
and costs taxpayers incalculable billions at the gas pumps. It can be
shown that most of what we pay for ethanol goes directly into the
pockets of big Agribusiness in the form of subsidies. (1)
Make no mistake about it; the manufacturing of ethanol (grain alcohol)
is no different from burning corn needed for human food in most of the
third world. Well-researched reports by academic and industry sources
make it clear that ethanol is counterproductive in a variety of ways,
including economically, and produces a negative result on the
environment.
How Big Is The Corn-to-alcohol Fraud?
The Renewable Fuel Association, a trade organization of big
agribusinesses, lists 129 existing plants with 76 more under
construction, and projects the total production capacity to a
staggering 13,429 billion gallons of ethanol every year. All but a few
small, experimental ones burn corn. (2)
History shows an explosion of production in recent years:
2001 1,770 (billions of gallons)
2002 2,130
2003 2,800
2004 3,400
2005 3,904
2007 13,429 Projected
(2) The Renewable Fuel Association
Figures on subsidies and industry profits are hard to come by, but
there is no shortage of experts who say the industry exists on
subsidies. One very credible report was done by David Pimentel,
professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell, and Tad W. Patzek,
professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkley, a detailed
analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from
corn and "bio-diesel" from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report
is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76). We cite
a summary report entitled “Producing ethanol and bio-diesel from corn
and other crops is not worth the energy.” Physorg.com quotes Dr.
Patzek: (3)
"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution…it is the
highest energy cost with the least benefit."
“In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol
production, the study found that: --“corn requires 29 percent more
fossil energy than the fuel produced;” Soybeans and other fuel sources
are no better.
"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's
energy security, its agriculture, economy or the environment
Professor Pimentel of Cornell added in the same paper:
"Ethanol production requires large fossil energy input, and therefore,
it is contributing to oil and natural gas imports and U.S. deficits."
"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid
fuel." "These strategies are not sustainable."
As negative as the Pimentel-Patzek 2004 study, Science Daily’s Energy
Bulletin summarized a later study by Dr. Patzek in its 1 Apr 2005,
headline, Study: Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units of Energy to
Produce Just One, stating the results:
“Dr. Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal
Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad
energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of
fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation
and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the
cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is
six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in
terms of power.” (5)
The report warns:
“In 2004, approximately 3.57 billion gallons of ethanol were used
as a gas additive in the United States, according to the Renewable
Fuels Association (RFA). During the February State of the Union
address, President George Bush urged Congress to pass an energy bill
that would pump up the amount to 5 billion gallons by 2012. UC Berkeley
geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek thinks that's a very bad idea.”
However, it appears as of this writing the 5 billion gallon ethanol
production goal has already been surpassed, according to The Renewable
Fuel Association, which lists the present capacity of the industry at
over 13.4 billion gallons. Our simple arithmetic tells us this would
use up about five billion bushels of corn each year, exceeding 25% of
the entire USA new corn harvest! (2)
The bottom line of alcohol energy non-efficiency
Imagine, according to the most conservative estimates, one must spend
1.29 calories of fossil fuels to raise enough corn to get back 1
calorie of ethanol. This seems to be the best case, and it may be much
worse. This is the obscene economics of ethanol. But for taxpayers and
consumers it gets much worse. It seem we are forced to pay three times
for alcohol fuel; first to subsidize those who make it from corn; next,
we pay in higher priced fuel at the pump that does not take us as many
miles as if we had no alcohol in our tanks; and lastly (and much the
worst) in the perpetual higher cost of food that is destroyed and never
to be recovered.
The astonishing subsides
Zfacts reports ethanol from corn subsidies totaled $7.0 billion in 2006
for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That's $1.45 per gallon of ethanol
(and $2.21 per gallon of gas replaced)"... resulting in a "$5.4 billion
dollar windfall of profits paid to real farmers, corporate farmers, and
ethanol makers like multinational ADM (Archer Daniels Midland)."
According to this study, consumers paid $3.6 billion extra at the pump.
* Subsidies for corn ethanol (4)
1. 51¢ per gallon federal blenders credit for $2.5 billion = your tax
dollars.
2. $0.9 billion in corn subsidies for ethanol corn = your tax dollars.
3. $3.6 billion extra paid at the pump.
In summary our Congress has licensed big agribusiness to burn food in
exchange for worthless alcohol. Yes, worthless is the right word for
corn made ethanol as fuel because it requires more calories to produce
than it returns when you burn it. Having a negative value is indeed
“worthless” except to those paid to make it by destroying valuable
food.
Ethanol is 200 proof “white lightning.” The infamous days of
“Prohibition” created laws that made it profitable for a few who raised
corn to have a still. Today’s corn-to-alcohol scheme produces almost
two gallons of white pure white lightning for every man woman and child
on the face of the earth! This means the entire world population could
be kept stupified most of the time on the grain alcohol U.S.
Agribusiness will produce in just one year…by destroying valuable food.
The scarcity factor in burning food
As outrageous as $7 billion of subsidies in one year are, the worst
part of burning food is the shortage of humanly consumable calories and
animal food that are an inevitable result. The same agribusinesses that
destroys corn, also sell what they do not destroy for food! They are
the big wholesale food beneficiaries from the shortage they are paid to
create, what a brilliant monopoly. Corn burning has an even more
sinister side. It is the primary and greatest direct cause of higher
food prices we all feel already, and is a direct threat to the
subsistence nutrition of the third world poor. Ethanol subsidies are
the key to controlling the food chain. Agribusiness industry giants can
control and set the price of food to whatever level they wish to
maintain, much as a few companies now control the price of petroleum,
so long as they are subsidized to burn surplus corn in unlimited
quantity. As long as subsides are available there seems to be no limit
to the scheme.
American corn surpluses are a blessing to mankind that has kept world
grain prices down for years, a gift to the world from American farmers,
and a gift from God! The largest surplus in the world was corn,
attesting to the incredible efficiency of the American farmer. If
Agribusiness giants can destroy America’s surplus and set the price we
pay for corn and everything that substitutes for corn. They can and
will then ration food worldwide and determine who lives and who dies.
We have already described the process by which distilling alcohol from
corn consumes more energy in fossil fuels than it creates. It is also
logical to observe that petroleum prices have gone up very steadily
since ethanol became mandatory in gasoline. Crude oil just touched
$81.00 per barrel, up 400% from day 911. If ethanol did alleviate the
energy shortage, why would we not be seeing lower demand and prices for
crude oil?
Every American is paying for this subsidized destruction of corn, not
once, but three times. First we pay the subsidized ethanol makers
billons (we assume someone pays for what our congress gives away) to
create a non-economic product we are forced to use; then we pay at the
pump because alcohol is poor auto fuel; finally, we again pay in higher
food prices resulting from the massive destruction of corn and other
food surpluses. We pay this, by far the worst cost over and over again
every time we eat a hamburger, buy a gallon of milk or a box of cereal.
Corn is not the only food being burned by American agribusiness giants,
but it is the only one they need to burn in their drive to control all
food prices. Corn triggers the rest. Poor Mexicans were the first to
complain. They felt the pinch from a 30% increase in the price of white
corn after the wholesale alcoholization of field corn caused the price
to shoot up to $4.00 per bushel in 2006...when ethanol finally absorbed
most of the corn surplus. Corn is an international market, and the poor
in Mexico City felt the pinch immediately even though they eat foods
made of white, not yellow, corn.
Corn, a native crop to the Americas, is a blessing to mankind--a truly
cheap food, rich in calories and capable of sustaining life. The
average wholesale price of corn was less than $.02 per pound in 2000;
but by 2007, thanks to the new alcohol refineries in the Midwest, the
average price doubled to $.06 per pound. Even after doubling in price,
corn is still our cheapest foodstuff, so what is the problem? You might
not eat much corn at your house, a few tacos once in a while, a little
corn syrup, maybe some in the dog food, but for the most part you eat
bread, meat, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables, so who cares about the
price of corn?
The problem is that when the price differential among commodities
exceeds the difference in food value, the prices of other grains go up
too. Farmers also switch what they raise, from what is cheap to what is
hot in the marketplace; this year they switched en masse to raising
corn. Now wheat has tripled and soybean prices have more than doubled!
The runaway corn price finally bubbled over into the soybean and wheat
markets in 2007. Soybeans, another food staple, now sell for more than
ten dollars a bushel, more then double.
In 2001 the average price of wheat was about $2.50 per 60 pounds or
$.04 per pound; right now the price is $9.25 per 60 pounds or $.15 per
pound, and has gone up more than 350% since our government started to
burn corn. Wheat prices have more than doubled in 2007. Everything made
from wheat is already on the rise. We only recently got used to paying
$3.00 for a loaf of bread, but this week I bought my first $4.00 dollar
loaf of bread, thanks to those who burn corn.
Consider the effect of the wheat price skyrocket in the one huge
starvation experiment being carried on in the world today, the 1.3
million citizens of the Gaza Strip. Gaza is a fenced compound with no
significant means of foreign exchange other than gifts. Gaza is
therefore almost totally dependent upon the wheat elevated over a fence
and dumped on the ground near its northern border with Israel. Israel
does not interfere with the humanitarian efforts of European countries
and private agencies. Imagine the impact of tripling of the price of
wheat? Suppose the European Union, which pays for most of the wheat,
defines its gift in Euros. With a tripling of wheat prices the amount
of bread available inside the wall drops from three loafs to one.
Assuming a substance diet inside Gaza 2/3 of the population will now
starve unless someone comes up with three times as many Euros. (6)Grain
of Hope for Gaza Residence
Meat is made from corn
It is obvious we ask what will happen to meat prices when grain prices
have doubled twice; how much will be future chicken, eggs, pork and
milk prices? If milk was to doubles twice, as grains have, it will be
about $8.00 per gallon! It takes a certain factor of grain to produce a
pound of beef on the hoof; it’s a direct ratio, so corn costs translate
into beef pork chicken cost of production. There is delayed action in
the meat market, before the cost of production hits the dinner table, a
boom-bust effect in the marketplace. The grain price explosion has
already happened, but the meat explosion is still quietly fizzling away
like steak on the grill, ready to explode. It will…it must.
The hungry all over the world that live on corn are the most
immediately affected; many more will starve, especially in sub-Saharan
Africa where corn is a staple of the diet. But a large part of the
American middle class is about to become vegetarian, whether we like it
or not, because a meat shortage is right around the corner, and many
will soon find meat an unaffordable luxury.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION:
The world market for food has been tipped upside down by the creation
of a government funded, privately run, monopoly with the power to alter
the available supply by destroying surpluses of corn or other grains.
Prices have only started the upward spiral to shortage and famine.
The US monopoly which we call "corn-to-alcohol" is dominated by big
agribusiness in the USA and it has eliminated the surplus of corn in a
few short years and this has resulted in instant shortages of other
grains as well. Now prices of grains are exploding in the world
markets, meat prices will follow. Unlike past "bull markets" in
commodities, this one cannot correct itself by increases in world crop
productions because the corn-to-alcohol monopoly has open-ended
subsidies to buy and destroy as much corn as they find necessary to
prevent surplus. Plus, when their monopoly drains its treasury,
Congress will just appropriate more, there is no limit so long as there
is no public outcry.
Surpluses of food are a blessing of freedom; shortages play into the
hands of tyrants. Surpluses are Godly and are talked of in the Bible
(the wise Pharaoh stored a 7-year supply of wheat).
The Ethanol monopoly could not exist without massive subsidies to
agribusiness giants, who in turn can pay giant lobbies to control your
Congressmen. The present system assures shortages for everyone except
the subsidized ethanol plants seen along our highways. The monopoly's
capacity to burn food is unlimited, so long as Congress pays for the
subsidies. No other argument is relevant, no excuses should be
accepted. The subsidy is the only issue that counts.
This paper only scratches the surface of the criminal acts surrounding
ethanol. America has been known as the land of plenty and the land that
shares its plenty. The corn-to-alcohol monopoly is the engine of
planned poverty for the entire world. Who will stop it?
Congress has total responsibility for creating the corn-to-alcohol
monopoly, but it will never reverse itself unless absolutely forced to
do so because most of its members are bought and paid for.
This is a moral issue. The 80% of Americans that are professing
Christians have a responsibility before our God not to allow corporate
and political criminal elements among us to cast a pall of planned
starvation over the planet. Leaders in Christian churches, who have
become quite political of late, now must help fix the problem of
starvation that they failed to prevent by giving carte blanche support
to those most politically responsible.
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