Fuckin' hell, it really is like reading rfcs...

He should have run far far away by now.
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smart, pretty, sane. pick two - georgeha

This is just an idea and speculation on my part, but wouldn't a poor harvest/civil war in one area have a small knock-on effect globally in the modern world economy, instead of causing a devestating local famine as in the past?

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It's political correctness gone mad!

He was saying that the biofuel companies that buy with him are selling to the food producers post processing. Traditional processing of corn for ethanol doesn't remove enough of the energy from grain to reduce it's value as a food source all that much so they can sell the resulting slurry or meal to various producers and it ends up either in Corn Flakes or as feed stock.

The big increase (for him) was the cost of fuel and fertilizers. Grain prices have been good for him, but not unusually so. I suspect that bio-fuel is a relatively small factor. Another story I heard on the radio, the increase in the price of rice which is not to my knowledge used for bio-fuel, seems to me to confirm this assessment. Rice farmers in Asia are getting hit with increased costs for pesticides, labor, fuel, and fertilizers. This is in places where I don't believe there is competition in arable land for crops that would be used for biofuel.

All this said, personally I think the best source for biofuel is bio-waste. I'm not opposed to growing crops specifically for biofuels, but I think the best spot biofuels can hold in a rational economy is as a method to reduce losses due to waste. A great example of this are the start up biodiesel processors that set up shot next to animal rendering plants and convert the leftover skins, bones, feathers, fat, etc. into fuel. I think it would do the world well if more companies started getting into a mindset of looking into ways to reduce losses from inefficiencies. Another example of this would be using the waste heat in factories, especially ones with blast furnaces, to produce the electricity that very factory needs.

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There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic

I think they offer the same attraction as conspiracy theory, a `hidden' answer that only the initiated/sufficiently enlightened can understand. This offers the adherents a sense of community that they otherwise lack, provides relief to existential longing for meaning, and offers continual hope for increasing understanding of the hidden knowledge.

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There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic

For instance, a lot of the big rice producers in South and East Asia produce almost entirely for a protected domestic market. Only the excess is traded on the world market for a freely determined price. Now I have no problem saying that is the real cost of rice, but as a result that global market is pretty illiquid and thinly traded by comparison to the actual rice supply. This makes it quite volatile under pressure like the supply shocks of this year and the demand pressure from biofuels.

I think you could be right that biofuels are viable for the last mile, but conversion of carbon sinks (ie forests) into eg palm oil plantations is a nasty case of unintended consequences ...

_{The Political Science Department of the University of Woolloomooloo}

Nearly as authentic and convincing as my latest pamphlet entitled Childbirth Made Easy.

Irony: ammo says it's time. Tom is blocked.

An army of Roman Legionaries marched in Parthia, led by this guy called Crassus. 35,000 heavy infantry went in, plus about 8-10,000 support troops. They met an army of horse archers. 10,000 of the 45,000 that went there came back. Crassus was killed, allegedly by having molten gold poured down his throat...

_{This is not to say that the Roman Army always lost in such circumstances. They chose the wrong battleground and tactics for their strengths on this occassion.}

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Girls come and go but a mortgage is for 25 years -- JtL

You just turn away any troops who don't match the ones you've already painted recruited, then you go and lose horribly to the first force that goes to war with the army that it has, rather than the one that it wants.

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Metus amatores matrum compescit, non clementia.

I think lm is right in reference to fertilizer and pesticide costs being the main driver in the recent price increases.

Fundamentally we're no increasing yield per acre the way we were able to in the 20th century during the green revolution. So while it may appear that localized events such as the drought in Australia or biofuel demand are driving prices, those events are simply riding on top of our decreasing ability to increase supply as demand increases.

When I'm imprisoned as an enemy combatant, will you blog about it?