Tuesday, March 04, 2008

U.S. Farmers & Congress Starving the World

Listening to Agri-Talk on AM 1030 during my long commute (1 mile) you would think Bio-Fuels (burning food for energy) are truly a wonderful thing that will save our precious environment. As usual though, follow the money. Kim Riddlebarger points to an interesting story at News.com.

A 41 per cent surge in prices of wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $US120 million ($126.5 million) budget shortfall that will force the USAID to reduce emergency operations, the report said.

This will cause the director of USAID's Food for Peace program to "prioritize" what country gets food.

As usual, governments that control the markets always end up starving the masses. But instead of some third world dictator, now it is the fault of the U.S. Government due to the influence of farm lobbyists. It seems to me that farmers want their cake and be able to eat it too. Free markets controlled by the government is just too self-contradictory. Let's face it. If it were not for a pathetic energy policy, we would not be driving corn burners.

1 comment:

Howard Fisher said...

I guess it is like Rush says, we are not to judge liberalism's results, just their intentions.

So here we have different groups. Liberals trying to save the planet, Farmers trying to capitalize on bad policy and Congressmen trying to help their constituents all doing the best to screw things up.