What does that have to do with the price of milk?
My guess is everything has to do with the price of milk. Last week the price of a gallon of milk went up to $3.54 in New York City. Compare that to a gallon of gas which is hovering around $3.10 a gallon in the city and you begin to see the problem.
Over the past year the price of milk has shot up 20% to its highest price ever. Why? Because of the price of gasoline. What do Gas and Milk have in common? Corn.
A few years back the government decided that in the peak summer driving months our gasoline would have an additive in it that would supposedly reduce emissions from our cars, that additive is ethanol. Ethanol is made from corn. About ten years ago the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was paying corn farmers not to grow corn. That's right farmers got paid roughly the equivalent of what their harvest would bare to allow their fields to lay fallow. There was so much Goddamn corn that we were giving it away to the Russians, it was better that letting it stay in silos to rot.
A brilliant person came up with the idea that we should add ethanol to our fuel, (todays gas is about 10% alcohol and 90% gas) and that there would be a summer months surcharge of close to 10 cents per gallon for the privilege of using this. One problem, most American cars are not designed to run on ethanol yet so engines do not process the fuel as efficiently meaning less miles to the gallon and more trips to the gas station which means more money out of your wallet, where is the fucking efficiency there. But hey at least they eliminated the problem of having all of that goddamn corn lying around. I not even going to start on how much energy gets used just to convert the corn to ethanol
But this is where the problem starts. Now there is more demand for corn than ever, farmers cannot keep up with demand so the price of corn has gone up. Dairy farmers use corn as the main ingredient in feeding their livestock so that they can produce their moo-juice. Since the price of their feed has gone up they have to pass that cost increase onto us the almighty consumer. Milk and Gas are two items that just about all of America can't live without, that is why when you walk into a supermarket, milk is all the way back in the corner so you have to walk through the whole store (and if the supermarketers had their way buy a few more items you would see on your way) to get the milk.
Now if we could only figure out a way to have gasoline with our corn flakes.
