The price of milk is going up. Gas is still cheaper, which is quite remarkable; it’s not as if they have to pump milk out of the ground, ship it across the world, refine it, add special chemicals, push it through a nationwide system of pipes, load it into trucks, and deliver it to stations, where 45 cents worth of taxes get added to each gallon. Milk comes out of Bossie over there, goes into jugs, and off to the store. So why the price spike?
As this story notes, last year’s low milk prices meant some dairy farmers left the business, “leaving fewer cows to meet demand.” (I suspect they were set free, and we’ll soon hear tales of vast herds of Feral Cows terrorizing the countryside, holding people up at hornpoint and demanding to be milked. ‘Cause it’s backing up something fierce, mac.) The real culprit, you suspect, is ethanol: since we’re devoting more and more corn to fuel, the price of Bossie-feed has gone up.
Last January there was a march in Mexico City to protest the rising price of tortillas, an unintended consequence of corn’s new popularity. Expect a story soon about movie-theater profits pinched by corn costs, although they could substitute Styrofoam packing material; add enough Gold’n Top’n quasi-butter, and few would know the difference. Then there’s this: According to this City Pages story, the ethanol industry may place huge strains on the state’s water supply.
Something to keep in mind the next time we vote on this issue. But keep this in mind the next time someone complains about milk. It's about four bucks a gallon now. Twenty years ago, according to the story cited above, it was . . . four bucks a gallon.
Fuel from food....
...there is just something wrong about that. There have to be waste products that they could alcoholize instead.