Back during campaign season I did an interview with Rep. Kevin Cramer, and we talked about the farm bill. Then, as now, the legislation was stuck in the midst of partisan bickering and I asked Cramer if there was really a lot of urgency to pass a farm bill (I quoted a NDSU farm management…
How Is Mandated Ethanol A Victory For Consumers?
According to the Associated Press, E15 (a fuel blend with 15% ethanol) “is currently sold in fewer than two dozen stations in the Midwest, but could spread to other regions as the Obama administration considers whether to require more ethanol in gasoline.” The oil industry has been resisting that expanded mandate, but was today dealt…
It's Not The Global Warming, It's The Subsidies
The Wall Street Journal has an article today about the corn belt moving north to North Dakota which, historically, doesn’t have the ideal climate for growing corn. So what’s driving this trend? According to the WSJ, it’s global warming: The shift, which is occurring in northern Minnesota and Canada’s Manitoba province as well, shows how…
Dorso Column: Build Fargo's Flood Diversion
In my book When Governance Worked there are two chapters relevant to the legislative debate that is now taking place on the Fargo Diversion. Chapter 7 “FARMERS- The Big Dogs and Chapter 8 WATER-They Are Still Fighting was put in that order for a reason. I’m also tempted to say at this point “I told…
Group Wants Government To Micromanage Soda Recipes
There’s no aspect of our day-to-day lives too trivial to escape the micromanagement of nanny statists. Maybe we should just have the government start restaurants, and we can all vote on what sort of foods can be offered. For the good of public health. Soda and other sugary drinks have unsafe levels of high-fructose corn…
Are We In The Middle Of An Ethanol Bubble?
The 2007 U.S. energy bill mandated that a total of 15 billion gallons of renewable ethanol must be produced by 2015. Because of this, demand for corn has skyrocketed, and the impact of that market distortion has been felt across the crop markets. It’s not just corn prices that have soared, but as farmers have…
Renewable Fuels Standard Could Gobble Up America's Entire Corn Crop
The government must stop mandating ethanol production, Mark Perry notes. It drives up prices and, unless something is done, in the not-so-distant future the mandate may have our entire American corn crop diverted to making ethanol: Corn ethanol is clearly inferior to gasoline as a fuel source for automobiles. Despite a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit to…
Biofuels Causing Famine
This is what happens when the government distorts markets with subsidies, mandates and protectionism. Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects, economists say, as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning…