Sep 29, 2007

SUBSIDIES: FARMERS GET FAT WHILE LIVESTOCK GO HUNGRY

The price of corn is the highest in a decade.  Ethanol plants are sprouting up in the corn fields.  Land prices are turning farmers with 200 acres into millionaires.  And yet, they still get direct government subsidy checks to "save the family farm."  "We're harvesting the sun," one of the new breed of business-man farmers boasts to Dan Morgan in today's Wash Post.  Maybe "harvesting moonshine" would be more accurate.  There is no credible study showing that ethanol is saving one drop of oil.

Source: WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu