From the looks of the editorial sections of many of the major newspapers, it appears evident that for the first time in memory, there is both a farm bill and an energy bill pending in Congress because we corn farmers are under attack for higher food prices and for having the audacity to provide an alternative to imported, blood-soaked, petroleum for motor fuel.

Big Oil and Big Food feel a need to use forums such as the Washington Post as a platform to tell us that it is the family corn farmer that is the crux of all evil in the world and everything would be much better if there were no farm bill or energy bill. The newspapers depend on the advertising from these behemoths of industry for their financial existence, but thankfully the press also provides a forum for those like me to tell the other side of the story.

Yes, corn is selling for a higher price these days and one of the many reasons is the expansion of our domestic ethanol sector, but let us understand that doubling the price of corn in the absence of greed would have increased the author’s New York strip from $28.00 to $28.25, the price of a 20 ounce soft drink should increase no more than one half of one penny and a box of corn flakes should increase no more than five cents.

The Washington Post piece, titled “The Rising Tide of Corn” by Michael Rosenwald on Friday, June 15 is a great example of facts that are true, but at the same time truly misleading. Rosenwald is correct in stating that the historical price of corn has been $2 per bushel and now it is $4. But Rosenwald fails to explain just how long that “history” has been. I can tell you that $2 corn has a history of about 10 years and has been around since passage of the infamous Freedom to Farm act, a bill intentionally misnamed such as the likes of other bad programs with good names such as No Child Left Behind, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Freedom to Farm eliminated the 60 year-old soft floor price on corn and ushered in a decade for corn farmers that saw their cost of production rise to over $3 per bushel and prices drop well below $2 per bushel. In the fall of 2005, some were forced to sell their corn for as little as $1.18 per bushel and they delivered the corn to the local elevator with $3.30 per gallon diesel fuel. Ouch!

There is nothing historic about $2 corn other than it has been relatively short in the history of economics, but excruciatingly long and painful for the farm families that have been forced to sell below cost of production for over a decade.

So are food prices too high and is corn-based ethanol the reason? It seems that the author thinks so because he derived his statistics on food inflation from the costly, expense-account priced Palm Restaurant just off of DuPont Circle, deep inside Washington, D.C.
His keen skills of deduction have led him to conclude that ethanol has driven the price of corn into the stratosphere and now his New York Strip has increased in price by $2. Nevermind the fact that at the old price of corn, his 12 ounce steak would have required 25 cents worth of corn to produce and now it costs 50 cents.

If we don’t live in a world absent of greed, the food industry will once again take more than their share from our families, both on the farm and around the dinner table.

Larry Mitchell
Chief Executive,
American Corn Growers Association