More About Corn (continued)

As a farmer, I took great offense to your "50 Ways to Improve Your Life" and "Try to Cut Back on Corn."

Your information had some anti-agriculture slants to it.  I think that if you will do a bit more research, you will find that the most important reason for the largest corn harvest on record is almost entirely due to the fact that there are so many ethanol plants popping up around the country! Corn farmers are not getting any more federal subsidies than they have any other year recently during the Bush administration. Corn farmers tore out other crops and planted corn knowing that corn prices would skyrocket due to the high amounts needed by the ethanol plants. Your article states that "the bulk of the nation's crop ends up feeding livestock, which can be cheaply fattened on corn." Maybe in year's past when the corn market was low, it was "cheap" to fatten cattle, but with ethanol plants making corn prices rise significantly, it is no longer possible to fatten cattle cheaply on corn. Cattle fatten best when fed corn; that is why corn is fed to cattle. I feel like articles such as this are what keep many outside of the agricultural arena with negative attitudes towards farmers and ranchers.  Why don't you take a minute to interview an average farmer and see just how much that federal subsidy helps him. You will find that few, except maybe the corporate farms, are making money on federal subsidies. Maybe you should write an article about that!

Allison McBride
Via e-mail