The best laid plans, you know. The price of corn, once the darling of alternative fuel proponents, is up 30 percent this year to $6 a barrel yesterday and is expected to continue rising.

Behind the spike, in part: surging demand for the grain to make ethanol, an alternative to fossil fuels that has it’s own environmental problems.

You might expect a new gold rush with farmers frantically planting more corn. Not happening. While the a new gold rush might yet create a crop of pioneering ‘09ers, the ‘08 U.S. planting is expected to be 8 percent smaller than last year.

“We may not be planting enough acres to supply demand, so that adds to the bullishness of corn,” said grains analyst Elaine Kub, in an AP story.

While higher corn prices won’t directly affect most Americans at the pump right away, it’s bound to put a damper on the popularity of ethanol, which means the fuel won’t compete as well with regular gas and, as was hoped, help keep fuel prices lower in general (the price of regular gas hit a new record today, $3.303 a gallon). And with corn as good as gold, expect food prices to continue the upward trend; corn is a primary feed for beef cattle and other livestock.

See the detailed AP story on the corn prices, plus where Ted Turner thinks this is all headed (talk about alternative food sources!) and last week’s The Axis of Evil Shortages: Food, Water, Fuel.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.