Animals consume a lot of corn. As do people, tho' they might not realize it. Corn is not just fundamental to cornflakes. It's a basic ingredient in dried dog food. It's essential to just about every piece of chicken we eat as well as every egg produced.
My family has an interest in a chicken hatchery and we deal with growers. The ethanol subsidy has managed to raise feed corn prices across the board. Over the past year our monthly feed bill has more than doubled and is still going higher. In the near future, if not already, you'll be paying a lot more for dry dog food, a box of cereal, chicken, corn fed beef, eggs, etc. and everything that uses these products. At one time our biggest headache was our energy bill, feed replaced that sometime ago and energy is now a fairly distant number 2.
As far as what drives land use for crop selection, in general it's return on investment. However, in addition to soil, water and weather that's also tempered by by what I call the degree of "effort and risk" - i.e. around here there are fewer headaches and less risk involved in raising a cow than it is to grow an acre of corn even tho', in relative terms, you can make more money off of the acre of corn. When a farmer starts feeling his age, less effort and risk starts to make more sense than pure economics. |
