#Corn

Politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows, and here I am carefully reading the Cato Institute’s most interesting analysis of farm insurance:Farm Bill Sows Dysfunction for American Agriculture (thanks to Stephen Zwick for sending). “Agriculture is a uniquely coddled industry with the USDA

In case you haven’t been keeping track, virtually all corn, cotton, and soybeans (and sugar beets not on this graph) are genetically modified.  Not only that, but they take up more than half of all cropland in the United States. And half the corn is used to fuel automobiles. Monoculture,

I’ve been appalled by the vast percentage of domestic corn production used to produce ethanol—nearly half. But I had no idea food crops were also being grown to make diesel fuels—until I saw this tweet/post: I went right to the source: Renewable Diesel Feedstock Trends over 2011-2022 The

Here’s my third Who Knew post of the week, this one an at-a-glance explanation of what’s wrong with the US food system, courtesy of FarmDocDaily. In 1980 or so, corn and soybeans comprised about 20% each of total crop acreage.  Now it’s 30% each. To bring this point home: Recall that more

A post on X (the site formerly known as Twitter) displayed this graph. It comes from a policy report published on FarmDocDaily: Concentration of US Principal Crop Acres in Corn and Soybeans. The bottom line: 30% of harvested acres is devoted to corn, and another 30% to soybeans. These, of