Why is inflation running away with everything on the kitchen table? One huge reason is industrial food burning. Over 200 ethanol production plants are subsidized to manufacture a colorless liquid many think they would like to drink, but few want to use in an automobile because it is inferior to gasoline.
Alcohol factories’ appetite for food-to-burn is literally insatiable, so commodity prices cannot seek normal market levels, as they always have in the past when temporary high prices took care of short supplies. The giant food burning mechanism is evil by nature in that it is already causing massive unnecessary starvation and death. About 60% of the corn produced in Iowa in the 2007 fall’s harvest will be turned to auto-alcohol, even though it is generally accepted (as our report details) that ethanol requires more petroleum to produce than it gives back in energy!
Because this is a moral issue, it is one that Christ-followers must take seriously. Even if you and I may think we can afford to buy food, regardless of its cost, we should be concerned for the tens of millions condemned to be the new starving people. Worst of all, American consumers are forced to finance the Burning Food Famine with massive subsidies most of us don’t even know we are paying. We must pay a second time in high produce prices, from milk to bread. Meat will probably be the next item in your basket to rise much higher.
We Hold These Truths’ original 4500 word paper was released on September 27, 2007, under the title, Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly. We searched the Internet and found it on well over 100 websites in several countries and languages, with broad interest, from cooking and gardening, to family sites, educational, political, and some mainline religion sites. No one has seriously attempted to refute either our facts or conclusions. Politicians ignore them.
Burning food, primarily corn, is an issue most people can feel and some fear, and it saddened me to have to write it. I am dismayed to note that not one candidate for President has raised Burning Food as an issue (though I believe Ron Paul voted against all the subsidies). The lobby for Burning Food must indeed be ominous to cow every candidate!
Selected Commodity Prices: Dec. 31, 2002 Sep. 31, 2007 Jan. 7, 2008
Corn per 60 pound bushel: $2.40 $4.00 $4.65
Wheat per 60 pound bushel 3.00 9.60 9.07
Cooking Oil (Soy) per pound .21 .41 .51
Rice, per pound; .04 .12 .14
Wheat prices have run up 300%, much of this in the last year. The affect on the very poor can be understood by considering the example of 1.5 million humans (not to mention animals) imprisoned in plain view of the world on an island cage called Gaza. They are dependent on wheat that is literally elevated over the wall to them dropped in their cage. Gazans could not survive but for the largess of humanitarians, including the United Nations food charities. But now the donated dollars buy less than 1/2 as much wheat as one year ago.
Will the Gazans learn to live on a fraction of their former diet, or will one of every two go hungry? The facts are they are already documented to be starving. This is the legacy of burning food. Literally thousands of tribes in Central and West Africa already feel the Burning Food Famine, the diabolical path to global famine. Many normally eat corn that now must be imported, and that costs almost $5.00 per bushel in Chicago.
We trust this update will lead many to read the whole report, some 4500 words of careful research and the conclusions of scientists. Please redistribute it to schools, church and polling place. Printed copies are available.
Our only honorable course is to force politicians to remove the subsidies given to industrial ethanol plants. A quick and decisive end to all ethanol subsidies will stop the Burning Food Famine overnight.
Warning: Killing ethanol subsides may require a revolution, and perhaps it is time. This is a moral issue, and the majority of Americans who are professing Christians have a responsibility before God to not to allow corporate and political plunderers to cast a pall of planned starvation over the planet. Leaders in Christian churches have become quite political; demand they help fix the problem of starvation that they have allowed by giving carte blanche support to those most responsible for it.
(http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1774) Would you like CD and a hard copy of the report? We can now provide it.
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