Corn ethanol is inefficient, and isn’t the best for the environment. It’s also pretty much all we have for ethanol biofuel production right now. There’s some talk that corn ethanol is a bad idea (I disagree for infrastructure reasons) right now, in part because it is affecting food prices. Corn for ethanol raises demand for corn, raising the price of corn. More land planted for corn means less for soybeans - so the price of soybeans goes up and people tear down more trees to make room for soybean fields in South America. People start switching to other grains to feed their animals and make their foods, such as wheat. Price of wheat goes up. Well guess which farmers are finding it more profitable to plant wheat? Opium poppy farmers in Afghanistan! (via Ag Biodiversity Weblog) So I guess there’s a good side to these price spikes, some of my readers might disagree on this, less focus on plants that make psychoactive compounds and more on plants that make nutritional compounds!

The ill-fated and ill-named “War on Drugs” has been a failure, and an exercise in psychoactive hypocrisy. Maybe this whole Corn Ethanol thing was planned out! I can just see the next U.S. slogans based on this, probably tacked onto the next Farm Bill:

Help fight the war on drugs - Buy Wheat from Afghanistan! (Or ethanol from the U.S. - same difference)

Now as long as these prices don’t force out grapes, barley, hops, (and the closest relative of hops), I’m good to go. :)

Just think, the White House could claim that this is the exit strategy from Iraq, too! ;)