The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 268
is all about. So you've "convoluted" the whole reason for being in business, and
added in incorrect data to boot.
Now, you might be trying to say that the corn farmers took unfair advantage by
tripling or quadrupling their prices, but that would be incorrect. The primary reason for corn prices going higher after the government's decision to mandate
ethanol-gasoline blends was due to commodity speculators pushing the prices
up. The farmers themselves didn't benefit to the degree that the prices increased. And I would venture to say that many may have only marginally benefitted, with the only benefit being that they finally had a crop with a solid market.
The calendar dates that I refer to are stated in the paragraphs of my previous
post. The figures I quote come from a website called Trading Economics, it's
URL is http://www.tradingeconomics.com/commodity/corn.
You can also find the history of crude oil prices at that website at
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil.
You'll be able to search a wide variety of commodities and prices over many
decades, and compare them against each other.
What you'll find is that there have been dynamic price changes since the ethanol
mandate, but that the ups and downs correspond to the dynamic changes in
the price of crude oil and oil-based fuels. So, in addition to the corn prices fluctuating because of commodity speculators, the farmers and ethanol distributors
were also affected as the price of diesel and gasoline skyrocketed.
I have come across people on message boards, and at events that I've spoken
at, who will challenge me by comparing a specific date when the price of corn
was very low to a specific date when the price of corn was very high - and they
will use that narrow example to prove how unreasonable the price of corn has
become. But that kind of comparison is like calling a baseball player "a lousy
hitter" simply because he batted just .147 during a particular weekend series,
when he batted .347 for the entire season.
You do have to look at the larger picture, in fact, a picture that's large enough
to take into account all the other benefits related to substituting foreign-dominated petroleum fuels with domestic non-fossil fuels.
