Beef or Fuel?

The message is finally reaching beyond beef producers that making ethanol from corn is not the best solution to our energy issues.

Dueling demands for corn

Cattle feeders say the growing need for it in ethanol is driving up the price and threatening their livelihood

By BRETT CLANTON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

TULIA — Ask John Van Pelt his thoughts on ethanol, and he's likely to pull out his adding machine and let the numbers speak for themselves.

Van Pelt, the manager of a cattle feedlot in this town 50 miles south of Amarillo, is now paying $215 a ton for cattle feed — double what he spent just three years ago. With 20,000 cattle in his yard, that works out to about $25,000 per day, just in feed, and what could become several million dollars in added costs this year.

Van Pelt blames...(complete article here).