I Burn Corn

I am in the city, away from the family for a week at some employer paid training.  So, I have a little quiet time each night.  This is different than the normal chaos that is always happening in my house.

And, in fact, now is a particularly good time for me to write an entry to the web site.  When I come to the Minneapolis I always stay with friends, since I can't really afford the hotel admission.  Today, I had lined up in advance a couple of weeks ago to stay with some geek friends of mine.  But, I showed up at their house and there is no one here.  This is just something you have to accept about geeky friends.  It is a beautiful day, and I am sitting in their back yard under a shade tree.   ...I should have brought beer!

June 10th 2008 was a big date for all corn burners.  The cash price of corn hit $7.20.  This is well beyond the level where it is cost efficient to burn corn over even pro-pain.   It is just amazing to me that corn could be so high.  I wish my father were alive to see it.  A farmer for 40 years, I remember how happy he was back when I was growing up, corn hit $4.00.

This puts us corn burners seeking alternative fuels.  Even if you are raising your own corn, you have to consider the price you could sell your corn for.  True, since you raised it, you don't have to pay out for it, but selling it you could buy some other fuel.  Heck, even if that fuel were natural gas, you would come out ahead.

Perhaps after the election this year a sane energy policy can come out of Washington.  I doubt it, but anything is possible.  Government subsidies of ethanol plants have to come to an end.  We can't continue to put our gas
tanks ahead of our food supply.

I am not really the kind of person who seeks vindication, but when I get lucky and predict something, it does feel good.  Unfortunately, sometimes that is mixed with the emotion of predicting something bad, and having it come true, as in this case.  The first year we were all buying corn and paying $1.43 and people were suggesting the whole country could be heating with corn.  At that time I tried to let people know that heating with corn was a good way to save money for those of us doing it, *right now*, the
under current conditions.  But I knew that could all change.  Like a tax loop-hole, they exist, but if a lot of people start taking advantage of them, the government closes them up.  Corn burning was great deal for a few of us, but then when lots of us start using corn, as it is now as people use corn to run their cars, it all falls apart.

Will this last forever?  No, I think things will get better for a while again.  If the government gets out of the ethanol business, we will get a reprieve for a while.  But, I think our current dilemma is a foreshadowing of what all of us will be doing in the future.  We will be searching for a way to keep warm in the winter.