Quote:
Originally Posted by HoosierRon
This is a story that is not easily summed up in a headline. The United Nations has an outfit called the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Yes, this is a curious name since the people on the organization do not grow food and their knowledge of agriculture is limited to taking from agricultural producers and giving to Marxist despots.
But I digress.
There recently was a big movement by the New World Orderists who clearly did not like America's recent uppity streak when it came to energy independence. They wanted to shut down America's biofuel industry. You can imagine the arguments (e.g., after all the graft payments, PEMEX does not have enough money left over from selling the U.S. oil for $139/barrel to subsidize tortilla sales).
This prompted the typical and completely unnecessary injection of facts into the discussion. As a result (along with the "fact" that America made clear any ban on biofuels would have to be funded by some other member state, such as Somalia or Togo), the FAO issued a report concluding that it would further study the issue and focus on increased agricultural output rather than banning biofuels. Of course, this leaves us with a couple of questions:
- If America is a soverign nation, how did the UN ever envisioning banning biofuels in the first place?
- If the doubling of corn prices due to Chinese demand and the falling dollar does not prompt increased agricultural production, what will?
- At what point in history did people who chose to live in the desert decide they were entitled to American corn?
In any event, I say it is a positive development for American energy independence and the American farmer when the UN decides to "study" an issue.
The battle.
UN surrenders.
Brazil's president tells the UN to go pound sand. |
Look, thing is that the UN is not happy, and it's not because "the US wants to become energy-independent", that's nonsense. The reason behind all of this is that the US was stupid from the get-go by investin in CORN-BASED ethanol which is wildly-inefficient in its production and use, mainly because it takes so much arable land to produce enough corn to be converted into fuel, and that conversion in turn takes up a lot of energy (something like .75 gallons of fuel required to make 1 gallon of corn-based ethanol).
ANYWAY, this reduces arable land, which means less wheat is being planted and cultivated. The US has been the global leader in wheat production for DECADES. We send huge amounts of surplus around the world (read about the wheat deal between the US and USSR in the 70's). Now that we're producing (and thus exporting) less wheat because the government is subsidizing corn farming, that causes problems on the world market and food prices soar. We're seeing it here too with food costs increasing. Why? Wheat goes into to feedstock for Chickens, Cows, and other livestock. Wheat makes breads etc. It all adds up.