New Report Sheds Light on the Old "Food Vs. Fuel" Bioenergy Debate

by Jennifer Runyon (RenewableEnergyWorld.com) There was never any conflict between using corn for food or for ethanol since corn growers send most of their product to animal feedlots. That product isn’t even meant for human consumption anyway.
It was an abundant year for corn growers in the U.S. This year’s corn crop is going to be substantially higher than any year on record. According to the monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report that is released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, total production is now projected at 14.475 billion bushels, 550 million bushels over the 2013 record. Yields, also a record, are projected at 172.4 bushels per acre. In fact corn yields have been growing substantially over time.
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More crop means less money for farmers: the projected price will be $3.40 per bushel, the lowest price in eight years, according to WASDE. Those lower prices ought to mean that consumers should see food prices go down. Right?
If only it were that simple. First it’s important to understand that when we hear about corn prices in the U.S. we really aren’t even talking about corn grown for human consumption, we are talking about field corn. Of all of the field corn that is grown, less than 10 percent ends up in anything that includes corn that humans ingest, meaning high-fructose corn syrup, corn chips, corn flakes, even alcohol. The corn that we eat off the cob or that comes frozen or in cans, which is called sweet corn, makes up even less of the corn crop. For every 1 acre of sweet corn planted, U.S. farmers plant 260 acres of field corn. More about that later.
Field Corn: 65 Percent for Animal Feed, 13 Percent for Ethanol
Of that field corn, the truth is that the greatest percentage of that corn crop grown goes to feedlots, which purchase more than 60 percent of the field corn grown by farmers in the U.S. (About 13 percent goes to ethanol plants.) With that in mind, it would follow then, that when corn can be purchased for lower prices, meat could then be sold for lower prices. However, this isn’t the case.
Globally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) has reported that its international food price index declined 2.6 percent from August and is down 6.0 percent over the last year. The FAO noted that grain prices were down nearly 9 percent since 2013, while meat prices are nearly 22 percent higher than a year ago.
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Buis (Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy) continued: “As integrated livestock and poultry companies brag about their record profits and margins to their stockholders and investment bankers, the Turkey Federation, National Chicken Council and The National Council of Chain Restaurants, all allies of Big Oil, continue their campaign to intentionally mislead Americans about the cause of rising food prices in the U.S.”
Whatever you believe about sustainable farming and whether or not animals should even eat corn or people should even eat animals (side note: Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma is great on this topic) the truth of the matter is that the production of biofuel from corn is not disrupting the food supply in any way, shape or form. READ MORE and MORE/MORE/ MORE (Ethanol Producer Magazine) and MORE (Renewable Fuels Association) and MORE (USDA) Download PDF

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: Farmers making their planting decisions for this year anticipated that the biofuels volumes in the RFS would be enforced. “But in one fell swoop, the EPA’s proposed rule wiped away demand for 500 million bushels of corn and grain sorghum,” he (RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen) said. “Now, farmers are faced with corn prices below the cost of production and the risk of returning to an era of increased reliance on federal farm program payments. The White House has an opportunity to help alleviate this situation simply by fixing the badly misguided 2014 RFS proposal and getting the program back on track.”