Ethanol Watcher, you need to ask yourself how much money you want to pay for gas in the coming years. It's a proven fact that once gas prices go over $4, the economy slows down even more, past $5, it ceases entirely. Nobody can make hay and pasture ground come back this year and you can feed straight corn to cattle without a little roughage i.e. hay or silage. Just because inputs like corn and soybean meal are high for the livestock guys, that doesn't mean the prices for their product are bad. Beef, pork, and chicken prices were pretty decent last I knew. Yeah those who raise livestock will feel the sting of this year's drought prices for grain but won't we all? Do you really think grain farmers in the hardest-hit drought regions will get all their input money back even with good insurance and crop prices? NO!!! If you guys want cheaper grain, raise it yourself! YOU come up with the money to pay for land rent/ownership, equipment costs, labor, insurance, and so forth, upwards of $500/ac. Take the gamble you get rain without hail, frost, and high winds...or you get no rain at all!!! Ethanol may or may not be a fuel for the future, but it is a start! Ethanol creates jobs for people in rural communities that otherwise wouldn't be there and pays rural communities here in the Midwest rather than those in Iraq or Iran. All who seek to use this drought as the scapegoat for putting the nail in ethanol's coffin can seal your kids' and grandkids' coffins in the next oil war. I will not send my kids of grandkids off to get slaughtered for your greed.
P.S. Please tell me how ethanol production is "immoral." I can't find anywhere in the Bible that says, "Thou shalt not make renewable fuels."
