Corn Prices

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Dark_Ale

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I understand the malting process. But how are they converting the corn starches to sugars. All this gasoline with 10%Ethanol corn prices are up, egg prices are up cause chickens eat corn, milk prices are up cause I guess the cows are eating corn....and so on.....From what I have read you convert the corn starch to fermentable sugars with enzymes...Well what enzymes. Do they magically appear or are they added? Why dont they use sugar cane to produce ethanol? Oh well, on my 5th Barley wine now:drunk:
 
One of the majors is our buddy, alpha amylase enzyme. The enzyme is manufactured and added to the starch.

Very little sugar cane is grown in the US. and subsidies for beet sugar makes it too expensive for biofuel. Brazil's biofuel program is almost entirely sugar cane based.
 
Most of the food prices aren't actually rising because of a competition with ethenol or biofuels, but simply because of a rise in the cost in fuel.

While corn prices may have risen slightly, is the fuel/transportation/raw materials that make up a greater percentage of the rise in cost of the finished product. It takes fuel to grow that corn, harvest that corn, package that corn (not to mention oil to make the plastic packaging). Then, it takes gas to transport that fuel to the farmer with chickens. All those fuel/transportation costs are passed on to the farmer, who then needs to use fuel to feed and raise the chickens to lay eggs, which takes more fuel... blah, blah blah.

So really, it's not the competition with ethenol that's making food prices go up, but the fuel costs associated with producing those products.
 
When corn goes from $2/bushel (11/05) to $4.50/bushel (12/07), I think it hits food prices as well.
 
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