Been to a grocery store lately?

Prices haven’t been this shocking since the days of runaway inflation in the 1970’s. Milk prices are skyrocketing. Beef and pork prices are skyrocketing. Soda prices are skyrocketing. Everyday items, cheap things we have taken for granted for so long, are no longer cheap and are getting out of the range of some families.

The entire phenomenon can be summed up in one word.

Ethanol.

You are witnessing The Law of Unintended Consequences at work - an alarming development that some of us have been warning you about for years. You don’t believe it? Follow along for a lesson in basic economics - something that should be taught at the junior high school level, but isn’t.

Milk: Comes from cows. What do cows eat? Corn.

Beef: Comes from cows. What do cows eat? Corn.

Pork: Comes from hogs. What do hogs eat? Corn.

Soda: What sweetens our beverages? Some people think it is sugar, but after Fidel Castro messed up the sugar industry, food processors were forced to find a cheaper solution for sweetening their products, and they did: Corn syrup.

What is the basis of everything in the American diet? Corn.

What is ethanol made from? Corn.

The price of a bushel of corn has gone up by a factor of four in the last year - and it is driving up the prices of everything, unleashing what could be an uncontrolled cycle of inflation in months to come.

The government-mandated blending of ethanol into gasoline was based on good intentions, which was, to make our air cleaner. The law of unintended consequences came into play as soon as the first gallon of ethanol was distilled over 25 years ago, except no one in government had the chutzpah to stand up and say, “Wait a minute! Let’s think this thing through!”

Here are the facts:

Ethanol is mandated by government to be blended into our fuel. The benefits of ethanol are under question, and even the do-gooders who told us, twenty years ago, how great ethanol was for the environment are coming out against it, realizing that some of us were right all along.

Why is it mandated by government? Because no one in their right mind would put this crap into their vehicles (it costs more, is less efficient and damages fuel systems) and the free market would never accept it. At the request of the Big Corn lobbiests, the government shoves it down our gas filler pipes.

It takes 70% more energy to produce ethanol than it releases. The process requires 131,000 BTUs to distill one gallon of ethanol, using precious petroleum products to do so, but ethanol only produces 77,000 BTUs per gallon - a loss of 54,000 BTUs. (Not counting the petroleum products required to plant, maintain and harvest the corn crop.)

It takes massive amouts of water - a precious commodity - to distill ethanol.

In order for the United States to use ethanol exclusively for motor fuel, 97% of the American land mass would have to be converted to growing corn for ethanol.

What does all this have to do with food prices?

Simple: we are burning our primary food source as fuel. That is even dumber than dumping raw sewage into our primary aquifer and don’t get me started on that.

Look at it this way: If the average car traveled 10,000 miles per year on pure ethanol, it would use about 850 gallons of ethanol. This would require 11 acres to grow enough corn to fuel that one automobile - 11 acres that would otherwise feed 7 people.

Does that sound like efficient land use? Of course not. It simply illustrates, once again that when the government tinkers with the free market, nothing good comes of it.

A revolt is in order, but it won’t happen until we all get tired of paying 5 bucks for a gallon of milk, almost 4 bucks for a gallon of gas that is about a pint short of gallon of gas, paying 4 bucks for a pound of ground beef, 5 bucks for a hamburger at a fast food place and realize that we’ve been had by the Big Corn lobby. It may be too late - the damage to our economy may already be too far widespread to matter.

Are you in love with ethanol? Check out what Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University has to say about “Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning” at: http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm