hate the game.

and in this case I'm not talking politics, I'm talking corn.

that great native food of the America's that has come to dominate the world.

I love a good steak dinner.  A great steak, perfectly cooked, some old fashioned side dishes & a good bottle of red wine.  This is not a cheap dinner to make but it's cheaper than going out to Morton's and tastes just as good (no, it tastes better!).
here's our dinner:

Cross-posted on La Vida Locavore

This week, the House held a hearing on the rising cost of food and its impact on child nutrition programs. Rep. Miller (D-CA), kicked it off and then the first witness took the floor: Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturer's Association.

Here is a man who represents Archer Daniels Midland, Bumble Bee, Cadbury, Campbell Soup, Cargill, Chicken of the Sea, Chiquita, Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Dannon, Dean Foods, Del Monte, Dial, Dole, Dr. Pepper Snapple, General Mills, Georgia-Pacific, Gerber, Heinz, Hershey, Hormel, Smucker, Johnsonville Sausages, Kellogg, Kikkoman, Kraft, Land O'Lakes, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, Safeway, Sara Lee, Sargento, Sunny Delight, Target, Unilever, and Welch, just to name a few of his organization's members. I am sorry but I just can't bring myself to believe that any of these companies are motivated by compassion for the poor.

Yet here is their representative, boo-hooing to Congress about the disproportionate burden high food prices places on the poor (oh and did he mention his concern for the environment?) unless Congress goes along with the GMA's agenda.

Did you know that high fructose corn syrup is good for you? Oh yes! So says the Corn Refiners' Association, which is launching an 18-mo $20-$30 million national ad campaign starting tomorrow. Phew! Time to celebrate with a 42 oz. Coke from McDonalds!

In other news, I saw a full page NYT ad this week from "the people's" oil companies, telling me how the real reason they want to drill the caribou up in Alaska is because they love me and want to make my life better. And of course, who can forget previous ad campaigns public service announcements letting us know that obesity is no problem, it's just hype, and that CO2 is natural because we breathe it out and plants breathe it in.

I'm so glad that all of these enormous corporations are on our side! (And I'm even gladder that Michele Simon - a big thorn in groups like the Corn Refiners' Association's side, no doubt - is speaking at Netroots Nation this year!!)

More on HFCS and more on Michele Simon after the flip...

While the Iowa farmers are busy having their crops flooded out, along comes this news from Texas.

.. many Williamson County farmers are still wondering if they'll break even due to soaring gas prices and the drought-like conditions wringing Central Texas dry.

Driving through eastern Williamson County, you can see miles and miles of brown corn stalks. ...      
...Farther south in areas like Seguin and Lockhart, extremely dry conditions have caused some farmers to pull their corn crops altogether.

This is not much of a diary but it gets into the political economy of energy just enough for the highly political people here at Kos.  There is not much discussion here other than "he said, they said" and "So n' so is Satanic" and if you believe something other than my way is the right way then you are a Republican.

But this algae stuff is really important.  I recently published a diary about the great ANWR Rip Off.  And that diary was very political. At least it was as political as I would typically get.  In it I accused the Republicans of seeking favor with the all powerful oil companies in their never ending quest for supreme fascism.  I will not retract that position any time soon.

There has also been an attack of Obama for his support of biofuels and specifically an attempt (justified or not) to link him to corn based biofuels.  That is a bad association to have in today's red hot food shortage world.  Obama is smart enough to dodge that I think and he is also smart enough to be promoting a "Profits Tax" on the oil companies.  He has not been explicit about the use of the revenues from such a tax and I have published what I think is the absolute stone cold nuts on that issue.

Have you heard about the emergency proposal to redirect corn that has been contracted for ethanol so it can be put to other uses this year? I haven't, but I'm hoping this gets on the table quickly given our food predicament.

Given the global grain supply situation, which, going into this northern hemisphere growing season has basically no reserves or tolerance for diminished harvests, the dependence on the global system on our midwestern grain production, and the floods across the midwest that are an unmitigated disaster for farmers, it seems to me that we are in for a huge food supply problem starting right about now.

I'm not sure if anyone noticed this yesterday, what with all the political news and now today with the story from Guantanamo.  But the price of Corn broke a new high.

When agricultural subsidies were institutionalized during the New Deal era they kept the country fed and farmers solvent in the face of overlapping economic and environmental disasters. Subsidies were first offered in exchange for not growing major commodities after a decade of oversupply and declining crop values. The policy allowed production to be reduced while the farmer’s income remained constant. A three-part system of subsidies was introduced in the 1934 farm bill with the intent of regulating supply and stabilizing income for farmers regardless of market conditions (Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933). While the details and names of the programs have changed over time, the overall policy of subsidizing commodity production to guarantee an ample supply of food has not (USDA, a).

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can raise my hackles. But only sometimes. Other times, I'm delighted by the creativity, ingenuity, and smarts of the technology and its scientists.

What scares me most, I've discovered while working on a related project, is idle blurring of the various issues involved with "Genetic Modification." When we speak as if it's all the same, and worse, when our leaders polarize the issue, then society is the worse for it. We need to acknowledge that it's not necessarily the process, but rather the implementation that is at issue.

On the one hand, you can have stupid GMO, as we have seen with Monsanto's proprietary "roundup ready" crop seeds -- corn, soybeans, and a few other crops they've developed, which can withstand Monsanto's herbicide Roundup™.

First of all I'm not a major supporter of Ethanol made from corn. I believe our ethanol supply should come from Sugar Beets not corn. Never the less, a talking point has become conventional wisdom that ethanol from corn is the major cause of rising food prices. It's not true argues Businessweek! Corn-based fuel isn't the villain critics contend. This crisis is much deeper then this.

Last year, American farmers grew a record 13.1 billion bushels of corn on 85 million acres. Of that, 22% went to make about 7 billion gallons of ethanol. That still left enough corn to supply the domestic market, increase exports to record levels, and stockpile a 10% surplus. McKinsey principal Bill Caesar estimates farmers will be able to keep increasing corn-based ethanol production to 15 billion gallons in 2015 (a level of output mandated by federal policy) without reducing the amount going for food and feed, and without increasing acres planted. The secret: continuing improvements in yields.

It's corn planting season in Nebraska. Farmers all across our state are tilling the land and planting corn. Some for food, some for fuel and some aren't planting anything at all and leaving a portion of their land as 'set aside' which means they leave it alone for wildlife and conservation efforts.  

Corn is the one thing America can produce cheaper than Mexico can.  Illegal immigration exploded in the wake of NAFTA, and corn is largely to blame for our immigration problem.  Mexicans eat a lot of corn, and they used to support a lot of maize farmers.  NAFTA changed that.  A Democratic response to NAFTA can energize unions, appeal to Latino voters concerned about loved ones across the border by promising to improve the Mexican economy.

Southwestern moderates view McCain favorably on immigration, but not his party base.  By going on the offensive with immigration in IN and NC Dems can attack the Republican base in new swing states, build bridges between unions and Latinos, and frame the immigration debate for the fall.

My friend and I have been looking at a 40 acre farm in west central Minnesota for a couple years now. She's already sold on it, I've been skeptical- $2000 an acre is a lot when corn was going for less than $2 a bushel. But $2000 an acre is a bit below market in this county, where speculators have driven prices to $3000 an acre. These rich folks took their money out of the stock market when it dropped, did a tax free transfer buying rural land, then put it in CRP and let the government pay them not to farm it. But with commodity prices rising I'm losing my skepticism. The owner is a friend whose family farms hundreds of acres and is willing to help us get started in farming, and he hasn't jacked up his asking price as commodity prices have soared. If we buy now, we can get in a crop this year!

Mexican cuisine has become quite popular internationally in recent years, especially in the United States. However, it is often describes as too full of fat, too greasy, or too spicy. as a cuisine, it is greatly misunderstood and often poorly prepared and presented.

Original article, sub-headed The Mandates Aren't Just Wrong, They're Immoral, by Robert Bryce via counterpunch.com.

Oh joy! Our food supply is being used, in part, to fuel our cars. And you wonder why food prices are working their way higher.

Ethanol May Not Solve Our Energy Problems, But It Makes Lots of People Happy
The successful Chevron test oil well in the Gulf of Mexico last year suddenly changed things for gasoline. With an estimated 3-15 billion barrels of oil newly available in the Gulf, it would seem that arguments to drill in ANWAR and new areas off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts fall flat – there’s no doubt the cost of political battles and arctic drilling expenditures would be way too high, even compared to the increased costs of drilling these new, deepwater oil wells. Oil companies can now shift efforts and money away from that cause and into rushing to get their share of these new reserves pumped out. Thus, even though this new oil is some 5-7 years away from getting into our production system, our gasoline shortage worries are eased, SUV’s are saved, etc, etc.
So what’s going on with ethanol?

The film "King Corn" will be aired on PBS this week. I'm looking forward to it. I love corn. I just don't like what we do with corn. In honor of "King Corn" I came up with some reasons to just say NO to corn.

What do the cost of food,  the food riots, overweight Americans, drug resistant disease and possibly the die off of bees all have in common?

Disclaimer: This is a biased post. I am pro small family farms and I am pro honey bees.  I belong to a CSA. I am a lifetime honey eater. I go through a large jar of the stuff every month. I am firmly opposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Update: Here is a link to a more thorough diary on corn written earlier this week by CSI Bentonville: http://www.dailykos.com/...