Conflicting visions pull farmers to and fro

The world wants cheap food and cheap energy, yet at the present time is getting neither.

Farmers, many for the first time in their adult lives, see a chance to make some real money after years of barely hanging on. Yet they are being villified for it. They are grabbing the brass ring, if you will, in the fight to make America energy independent, but it means abandoning their traditional role of feeding the world.

Ethanol from corn has driven prices for the commodity to record levels, to the great profit of many corn growers. But it has caused considerable pain to livestock producers, who buy corn to feed chickens, hogs and fatten cattle. Now they must compete for corn with ethanol refiners, radically skewing the economics and profit margins of livestock production.

Similarly, the sugar used in most commercial baked goods, soda pop and other beverages, is made from corn. These industries have for years found it much more profitable to use corn sweetener rather than cane or beet sugar. Now they too, must compete with ethanol for corn.

All this economic dislocation, for a product that takes more energy to produce than it returns as motor fuel, and according to many environmentalists, is tougher on the environment than fossil fuels. Ethanol pollutes just as much as gasoline, but takes huge quantities of water, land and fertilizer to grow the corn to make it, so the environmental cost is high.

Farmers are torn by these conflicting visions, and inclined to take the quick profits from growing corn while they are available and before a more efficient ethanol source, like sorghum or sugar cane, takes hold. That won't be without controversy, as all those food manufacturers switching back to cane sugar or molasses, will then find themselves switching back to corn.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, the old saw goes. Maybe its right.