8-5-08 by dugan
Remember all the assertions earlier this year that demand for ethanol was skyrocketing the price of corn and other farm commodities? Oh, and possibly starving the world. OilWatchdog kept arguing that energy prices had at least as much to do with corn, soybean and other prices, partly because of the twinning of energy and farm commodities in hedge-type funds.
So now, down come oil prices—and down come commodity prices, at about the rate of oil. (Here are charts of daily and historical corn prices) Coincidence? Not.
Couple the price drop with ethanol-making techniques that preserve more of the food value of corn, and progress toward commercialization of ethanol-from-garbage, and an arrow in Big Oil’s anti-ethanol quiver is blunted.