Dr. No

The Case Against Ethanol

Two thirds of Americans are overweight, one third is obese, worse than any other country. 70% of grain is used to generate animal protein at a 8:1 ratio. There is huge savings potential for grain in a better diet (ie avoiding cardivascular and metabolic diseases) by cutting meat intake. Also, Americans eat twice as much as they need per day - again huge savings potential right on your plate.
Finally, America is the biggest consumer of everything: energy, food.

Make the connection fatzo: eat less - drive more!

Ethanol Update: Crush Spread Plunges, Bush Expresses Concern

Well if you think cellulosic ethanol all the way through, and consider that turning forested areas into agricultured will release tons of GHG (just read the two recent science papers in a biggr sense), is cellulosic ethanol from wood chips still such a great idea ???
Because as you turn the wood into ethanol your land needs to be dealt with and you all of sudden created agriculture, which is exactly what the science papers were attacking.

Cramer: "Ethanol Is a Fuel That Doesn't Work"

Cramer uses (as the author of this post) the ethanol tag word as a board to jump on a waggon. While there are issues with ethanol, rising oil prices (i.e. 100% from Feb 07 to Feb 08) have a much bigger impact on food and all living expenses than increased use of corn for ethanol. Run the numbers! (so the corn in a box of corn flakes is about 10c, how much does the box sell for ?)

VeraSun Energy: Follow the Ethanol Crush Spread

There are a number of additional commodities to consider that make up the ethanol model: natural gas, electricity, DDG/S and the oil price. While the crush spread is a proxy it is crude as it ignores the other commodities also impacting the P&L.

VeraSun Energy Back on the Gas - Um, Ethanol

Monsanto's chief was just quoted as saying he sees lower corn plantings coming, so that may be beneficial to the corn price as supply shrinks.
The deal with the smaller ethanol plants is more complex as those farmers have made a killing on ethanol previously and the plants are paid off. They on the other side do not need to buy on the spot market, but their calculation is based upon the corn input cost, and then ethanol still may make money for them where it does not for commercial ethanol producers. In addition they are not necessarily your preferred deal partner when it comes to M&A. So M&A will rather occur with small, farm independent ethanol producers, especially those that just got into the business, because their loans hurt.