*Column: Food-to-fuel is bad policy*
Wausau Daily Herald
Jim Maas, Libertarian Party of Wisconsin

April 29, 2008

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we
would soon want for bread. -- Thomas Jefferson

Time and again we find that the wisdom of our Founding Fathers remains
true today -- and reminds us that we don't have that quality of
political leadership today.

At one point, we thought America could profit by feeding the world with
our agricultural bounty. We might not be able to build stuff like we
used to be we can grow stuff. Now we are burning food for fuel, by
government mandate. In the last year, the price of wheat has tripled,
corn doubled, and rice almost doubled. As worldwide food prices soared,
riots have broken out in a score of countries. Will this be our future?

American agricultural policy is interventionist, expensive, inequitable,
and damaging to American interests abroad and consumer interests at
home. Reluctance to reform farm subsidies helps special interests at the
expense of consumers and international relations.

Even worse is the crazy energy policy. At first it sounded great. We
could achieve some degree of "energy independence" and less use of
fossil fuels by converting a home-grown renewable resource: Amber waves
of grain into energy independence!

But, any time the government gets involved in anything important,
beware. The government has mandated that fuel producers use at least 36
billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, which equals about 27 percent of
the gasoline Americans currently use annually and is about five times
the amount being produced now.

As a result, about 100 million tons of grain (enough to feed nearly 450
million people for a year) will be transformed this year into fuel
(which must be subsidized so people will buy it).

Taxpaying consumers pay more for food AND our government spends our
money, $11 billion a year, on ethanol subsidies. Meanwhile, people go
hungry.

Ethanol isn't turning out to be the ideal solution we had hoped.
Diluting our gasoline with it reduces gas mileage, so we need to buy
more of it. (Who benefits by that?) Ethanol is too caustic to be
transported by pipeline so it must be trucked, increasing expenses and
pollution. Ethanol is hard on small engines, outboards, and on some fuel
systems.

If biofuels are such a good idea, American ingenuity will make them a
viable energy source without any assistance from the government. Ethanol
will neither reduce dependence on foreign oil nor significantly help to
reduce pollution. Subsidies for ethanol serve no other purpose than to
artificially prop up favored special interests.

Ominously, as scientific facts about bio-fuels have been revealed in
recent years, politicians (from either major party, other than Ron Paul)
have not advocated to end this boondoggle. The agribusiness-government
complex is at work in this country -- and family farmers and consumers
are not its main concern. Without a shift in priorities, this will not
end well.