... oil prices are skyrocketing yet there are no oil shortages. Supply and Demand rules no longer apply. The inflation is caused by market traders. Is the same going on with Industrial corn?
What I understand from the situation is that corn growers are making way more money from selling their corn for ethanol than for food products. So, many growers are holding onto stock until they can get higher prices for it. The same thing is happening internationally with rice. where, What I've heard is that rice is being used for biofuels, as well. As the price has increased and people have been hoarding due to fears about shortages and higher prices, growers are holding out for higher prices, driving prices up higher because there's less rice "available."
And American corn can be cheap (if they want it to be) because of those subsidies from the government, even though there hasn't been a need for them for years. The subsidies were supposed to be only for years when crops failed, but the lobbies for agribusiness kept them going. (I'm not sure how big the subsidies are in Canada, but I've heard complaints about them on CBC's As It Happens over the last few months.)
And in Texas, millions of acres that used to be for growing rice have been sold off for development, because as long as the person who builds the McMansion on the 9 acres (I think that's the minimum to make this work) declares that the acreage is for farming, they get a subsidy, but they don't have to grow anything.
So, yes, it's the same as with oil. Even if you're producing enough to fulfill demands, you hold it back to drive the price up. Wasn't there legislation recently that ethanol has to be a certain percentage of our gas at the pumps now? It's all artificial. Remember the toilet paper "shortage"? We're all pawns.
