It is time to go vegetarian

[cathleeninnh]

In order to limit gasoline consumption, the government subsidizes fuel corn to the tune of $7 billion a year and imposes 54 cent a gallon tariffs on imported ethanol. As a result, feedstock for cattle, pork, and chicken costs 30% more than it did last year. Meat supply will plunge and prices will rise.

When the cost goes up, don't call it inflation. Call it a tax.

Cathleen

[eques]

For those who would run for office:

"Must love subsidies."

[d_goddard]

Another far more perverse effect of this tariff is that 3rd-world and developing-economy farmers cannot effectively compete on price in selling their grains to the USA. Result: they stay poor, and food (yes, the distortion affects food crops too) in the USA stays expensive.

Also, using corn for ethanol is many times less efficient than using sugarcane; it takes as much energy to create the ethanol as it does to just burn an equal amount gasoline in the first place.
Corn ethanol does nothing to help the environment. Cane ethanol does. But the USA does not have a lot of powerful lobbying sugarcane interests.

Fucking perverse.

[dalebert]

This is horrible and typical of enviro-hysterics, but I must admit some relief. I saw the subject and thought it was gonna be another of those "your stomach is a graveyard" posts.

[cathleeninnh]

What enviro-hysterics? I'm pissed that food prices are going sky high because of idiotic government interference!

Cathleen

[error]

That reminds me, I should go have some steak for lunch, while I can still afford it!

[cathleeninnh]

Maybe I should have said to raise your own livestock.

No wait, the NAIS will run that cost up as well.

Government meddling in agriculture is nothing new. It just gets worse and worse.

Cathleen

[EJinCT]

Supply and demand; capitolism at it's best and worst.

This is horrible and typical of enviro-hysterics, but I must admit some relief. I saw the subject and thought it was gonna be another of those "your stomach is a graveyard" posts.

What enviro-hysterics? I'm pissed that food prices are going sky high because of idiotic government interference!

Cathleen

Open mouth, insert foot. 

[cathleeninnh]

Subsidies and tariffs wreak havoc with supply and demand. Give me a free market any day.

Cathleen

[dalebert]

What enviro-hysterics? I'm pissed that food prices are going sky high because of idiotic government interference!

Cathleen

I wasn't referring to you. I'm saying the problem in the first place is fueled by enviro-hysteria. There are lots of smart things we can do for our environment. However, I find so many of our decisions are bad because we don't do cost-benefit analysis. In the case of the government, about the only factor is money- effective lobbying and so forth. Any actual analysis is merely heavily biassed justification for what's already been bought and paid for.

[cathleeninnh]

Was it really environmentalists or corn growers that fueled the fire? I recall back in the 70's and 80s that research was pretty evenly divided among differing technologies. When ethanol use was first proposed, there already was evience it wasn't the most economical process. Then something happened and next thing you know, the corn growers are getting richer and richer. I guess they already had a great lobby having gotten corn syrup into everything.

Cathleen

[cathleeninnh]

I may really go on a every other day vegetarian diet, or something like that. We already don't eat a lot of meat.

Cathleen

[toowm]

One other non-market outcome of the sugar and corn subsidies is corn syrup as a sweetener. It's in just about everything - my kids tried to avoid it for a week but found it even in bagels and lunchmeat. It's been linked with the rapid increase in diabetes.

I can't go vegetarian in response to government meddling because I use a low-carb diet to tightly control the diabetes I got from government meddling.

[d_goddard]

I'm on a vegetarian "diet" because just I don't like killing animals.
:broc:

[Lloyd Danforth]

If I understand Farm Subsidies, some of them are paid to farmers to leave their fields fallow.  I would think with the imminent demand for various vegetable matter, Beans, Sugarcane, Corn, etc., I can't believe they are not being encouraged to get to growing that stuff, by dropping the subsidies.