Haha, yeah I was just kidding about the whole coffee shop thing. I'm just saying putting an optimistic spin on everything won't make the world a better place. I just keep getting sick of our politicians and their complete incompetence on everything energy, republican and democrat alike. They make it sound like drilling ANWR will make us not have to worry about anything for the next 100 years, when in fact it would take 10 years to get running and lead to a few dollars less that oil prices will rise.

Iowa ranks #3 in the value of crops produced in the United States behind California and Texas.

The United States is required by the 2005 EPACT law to produce: "6.1 billion gallons by 2009 and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012." The ethanol law was made more strict in as much as 36 billion gallons of annual production is required by 2022. The cap on grain/food ethanol was to be put at 15 billion gallons.

In 2007 the Dept. of Energy estimated that efforts to comply with the law might cause the United States to use 31% of its corn harvest by 2014.

There was an estimate that 25% of the corn harvest might be used this year to produce ethanol.
Another cited a study that 20% of the U.S. soybean harvest was being made into biodiesel.

Since the United States takes a dollar off the price of a gallon of biodiesel, the stuff was shipped to Europe were they have mandatory requirements to use biofuels. There have been allegations that the United States was dumping biodiesel in Europe below the price that it costs to make it. Taxpayers money is being used to give Europeans cheaper biofuel.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9PP-5HqEGZYPHnP_5HrwSHyZRbg

The mandates for increased ethanol production may be enforceable if voluntary compliance is not found. One group was trying to set up an ethanol trading board to trade ethanol credits similar to the way other parts of the world traded carbon credits. If one was selling fuel and did not have enough ethanol, one would have to buy credits from someone producing ethanol according to attempts to define the law in this manner. Some states already require 10 percent ethanol blending regardless of the price of ethanol; a more clearly defined mandate. If corn were to go up ten times the way oil has and ethanol becomes several times more expensive than gasoline, there is no free market safety valve to prevent an implosion in food stocks. If ethanol were yet allowed, but not mandated or subsidized, the ethanol could only be sold if consumers wanted it. If the Federal requirements are interpreted as guidelines, but not enforced, then the ethanol industry might go belly up if people will not want to pay their expenses.

Since biofuels production increases have coincided with food price spikes since 2005, there is evidence that current food inventroy shortages might be directly related to large scale conversions of grain, sugar, and vegetable oil to biofuels.