Re: Food Prices Up - A Result of Biofuels?

Like it or not, tobacco is a profitable crop.  Besides the total acreage of tobacco is minuscule, even when compared to "luxury" crops like sweet corn, which is 100% human food.

You said it "mega-tons" of HFCS.  Don't forget the millions of tons of rice, wheat and corn that go for beer!  The issue with those is that their demands have been pretty well established over many decades of sales data.  While the uses may be "decadent" the demand is not disruptive.

A vehicle uses more Calories/BTH in an hour than a person does in a week, or a livestock animal does in a day or two.   That makes the demand disruptive.

In a pure free market economy I'd welcome the disruption as an event that helps find a new equilibrium.  But government subsidies prevent the market from operating efficiently.  Chaos is a far more likely outcome, than a new equilibrium.

Blaming tobacco and ADM is a red herring.  Trashing all farm subsidies, would *really* fix the problems in the shortest possible time!  Sure prices would spike for a season, but they would easily stabilize at 50% or less than current inside of 2 years.  And we'd have greater abundances too, which we could export.