In commodities, crop prices rose sharply, with corn up more than 6% and sugar at a three-year high on fears of a poor harvest in some parts of the globe.
In the 16 months since Bernanke assured us that QE1 would not jeopardize price stability, oats prices are up 40%, concentrated orange juice up 45%, gold and rice up 50%, corn up 55%, coffee up 60%, copper up 70%, sugar up 90%, and cotton and silver up 100%!
High gasoline prices drive ethanol prices up, and high ethanol prices drive corn prices up.
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When the price of corn goes up, the price of all of these foods go up.
Iowa corn farmers push up the price of corn flakes by being so appallingly profit motivated that they ship corn to Mexico as exports.
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The other reality is that Americans and others will likely be paying a lot more for cereal, sweeteners and meat as the price of corn goes up because of failed crops.
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Environmentalists complain that the side effects of ramped up corn and ethanol distillation have more negatives than positives.
Through late December corn prices are up 12% on the year, while soybeans were down about 9% and wheat was down 25%.
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In 2008 and 2011, when corn prices went up to levels nearly as high as today's, the world saw a sharp rise in food riots.
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The ethanol industry recently produced roughly 35 million metric tons of DDG a year, though the current Midwest drought is driving up corn prices and cutting ethanol production.
Aside from the ethanol boom pushing up corn prices, critics argue producing the biofuel consumes more energy than it saves and might actually add to global warming concerns.
Without sufficient technologies in place to make corn ethanol, increases in corn ethanol will drive up food prices, adding to inflationary pressures.
He set up a corn popper in front of his store and offered free bags of fresh, hot popcorn to his customers, who were drawn by the aroma.
While the corn cooks, whip up your mayo.
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Among the largest underlying components of VB, in trading today Panera Bread Co. ( NASD: PNRA) is up about 0.6%, Corn Products International Inc ( NYSE: CPO) is up about 1.9%, and Oil States International, Inc. ( NYSE: OIS) is higher by about 2.2%.
At the end of February, corn and wheat prices were up 80% from year earlier prices.
That should be enough to get him to South Dakota, where he can pick up some more corn-cob ethanol from POET before heading further east.
Inflation has already overshot the central bank's 4 percent limit for three straight months after bad weather and an avian flu outbreak drove up egg, corn tortilla, meat and bean prices.
His mother grew up sleeping on a corn-shuck mattress and brushing her teeth with twigs.
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Demand for corn is such that more land is also being ploughed up in drier regions of the Great Plains states to the west of the corn belt, where irrigation in required, increasing water demand further.
We have the futures markets: the future price of corn and soy and wheat has gone up.
This will most likely entail increasing the corn ethanol mix in petroleum, running up food costs, depleting water supplies, and causing environmental land damage while affording no net CO2 emission reduction.
Some Democratic Congressmen from rural states are said to be refusing to agree to the bill unless it continues with the current subsidies for corn ethanol which are accused of pushing up the cost of food and wasting energy rather than saving it.
Some of the products sold as honey have been bulked up by sugar, water and corn syrup.
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Using the stalk of the corn plant instead of the kernels could open up a limitless, renewable fuel supply.
Economists don't expect many of the cotton farmers who had abandoned their traditional crop for others like corn to rush back into cotton and drive up the supply.
Obediently, I read up on the Factory Acts and the Corn Laws and studied the newspaper.
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