“Disgusting,” “chalk” and “sawdust” are how they describe the taste of their corn. It turns out that about 55 percent of their crop is destined for animal feed, 32 percent for export or ethanol use, and a small portion for such sweeteners as high fructose corn syrup. It doesn’t need to taste good since no one’s going to eat it off the cob.

A central point throughout King Corn is that the United States is producing an incredible amount of corn, and of those 93 million acres planted in 2007, only about 250,000 were for sweet corn, the stuff that’s edible right off the cob.

Strange, eh? But, to be fair, entirely logical. Why grow sweet, fat ears of corn if they’re just going to be fed to cows?

Anyway, both Obama and Clinton are backing it (I wold like to hear the thinking person’s defense) . . . McCain is against this . . . its tough . . . the Dems have a chance of putting Iowa into play and voting against this bill makes that more difficult.

Are you referring to HR 2419? Because I noticed that ranking Repub member of the Ag Committee, Bob Goodlatte, voted for the Bill along with Thelma of Drake.

You’re absolutely right, Bubby. I was looking at the initial vote on the bill in the House of Representatives, not the vote on the revised version. I’ve modified this blog entry accordingly. Thanks so much for pointing that out.

On a related note, one nice thing I’ve noticed about high oil costs is that the price of the organic and local products we buy seems to be more in line with that of the regular labels.

Great point, Tom!

Incidentally, basil subsidies sounds like a fantastic plan. I try to grow at least twice as much basil as anything else in my herb garden, but it never feels like it’s enough.