WSJ: Corn too pricey, so pigs chow down on snack food

[Robin Garr]

What's next? Chocolate-coated pork chops?

With corn prices rising, pigs switch to fatty snacks
By LAUREN ETTER
The Wall Street Journal

GARLAND, N.C. - When Alfred Smith's hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

"Pigs can be picky eaters," Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, "they like the sweet stuff."

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren't eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith's main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms' biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, since it can be cheaper.

Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. "It's kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs," says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns.

In Pennsylvania, farmers are turning to candy bars and snack foods because of the many food manufacturers nearby. Hershey Co. sells farmers waste cocoa and the trimmings from wafers that go into its Kit Kat bars.

Full story online

Another travesty (not that whatever they feed pigs is a travesty) to do with this ethanol corn business is Tequila. Some of the tequila producers are clearing their land and growing corn for ethanol. Less tequila, although less tequila is unstoppable considering the problems they are having with the plants. Bourbon will also be in the mix, since it has to be 51% corn. It's even more angering when you learn a little about this ethanol and the logistics of it and it's faux environmental goodness according to the study that done at Berkeley. Makes you think its a big waste of time and perhaps we should move on to another alternative.

This is why ethanol is only going to work for hybrid mass transit. If people think ethanol is going to get rid of foreign oil dependence then they still need to be ready to ditch their cars and share rides.

How about all of the rain forest being cleared out now for Palm Heart ethanol? There's another genius move.

Yikes...I'm not even going here...but read Food Fights and Fast Food Nation and find out a bit about the corn industry in feeds and corn syrup.

Yeah the plus side is we'll see less High Fructose Corn Syrup in food.

Yeah the plus side is we'll see less High Fructose Corn Syrup in food.

ha! Well beyond that, ALL, foods will go up in price because farmers will all move to corn. The government would HAVE to regulate what farmers can produce corn and what farmers can't, and that is not a good thing.

Yeah the plus side is we'll see less High Fructose Corn Syrup in food.

ha! Well beyond that, ALL, foods will go up in price because farmers will all move to corn. The government would HAVE to regulate what farmers can produce corn and what farmers can't, and that is not a good thing.

Hey I'm just trying to find the silver lining buddy!

About a month ago, I bought stock in an ethanol fuel company. The silver lining for me will be when that stuff starts moving up.

Growing more sugarcane for ethanol would be a much better choice. It's easier to cultivate and process. And areas it can successfully be grown in are more limited, so it won't really negatively affect the growing of other things. If Brazil can do it, so can we.

Growing more sugarcane for ethanol would be a much better choice. It's easier to cultivate and process. And areas it can successfully be grown in are more limited, so it won't really negatively affect the growing of other things. If Brazil can do it, so can we.

Thats a good idea until they slash the entire rainforest to grow sugar cane. I think it best we find a fuel that we can get cheaply from the moon.

[Robin Garr]

Growing more sugarcane for ethanol would be a much better choice. It's easier to cultivate and process. And areas it can successfully be grown in are more limited, so it won't really negatively affect the growing of other things. If Brazil can do it, so can we.

There's a human cost, though. From Haiti to South Florida to Brazil, sugar-cane cutting is one of the most harsh and poorly paid jobs around, and workers are exploited to near slave-labor conditions, even in the U.S.

Unless we're willing to accept this as part of the price of doing business in a free market, the only just solution - fair wages, humane conditions and the right to organize and bargain collectively - would dramatically and significantly increase the cost of cane sugar products including ethanol.

Aside from the fact you still need oil to produce ethanol in the transport and running the machines. Plus Energy return on Energy invested is pretty low. Again the amount of arable land no matter what you are using is no there to sustain the transportaion system as it is now. Ethanol is a bandaid fix at best for a this issue.

That ethanol is a band-aid is my position as well, but it is my understanding that sugarcane is far more efficient than corn in terms of producing ethanol. Certainly I care about farm workers or any workers being harshly treated, as well as the environment being screwed up. On the other hand, we have a world hungry for energy, and at low prices, as inexpensive energy is the key ingredient to a healthy economy.

My hope is that we can ultimately harness enough solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean current energy, along with using safer nuclear technologies, to overcome this growing energy crisis.

[Robin Garr]

Certainly I care about farm workers or any workers being harshly treated

Never meant to suggest otherwise, Steve. It's worth noting, though, that the sugar cane industry is almost literally unique in that regard. If I'm not mistaken, the roots of slavery in the new world were originally based not on cotton but on cane, because it's work that no free man would willingly do.

Certainly I care about farm workers or any workers being harshly treated

Never meant to suggest otherwise, Steve. It's worth noting, though, that the sugar cane industry is almost literally unique in that regard. If I'm not mistaken, the roots of slavery in the new world were originally based not on cotton but on cane, because it's work that no free man would willingly do.

Can't machines do the harvesting today?