Christmas is over, and business is business. Let's out the new new Anti-Christ

I know I have called Government Sachs the Anti-Christ in the past. I find that I must now demote them to common "evil doer", or maybe a triumvirate in the Wall Street axis of evil... as soon as I figure out who the other 2 are...

Anyway, the NEW NEW Anti-Christ, "AC" for short, is the USDA (With the FDA as its Dark Arch-Angel). The U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is going to take several, perhaps even many posts to flesh this out - it is just not possible to heap enough scorn on these Sc*m B*gs in a single post.

The U.S. faces some SIGNIFICANT food insecurity. I know the loonies on the web have been pumping this for several years... but they got it wrong for the right reasons. Just kidding... they just got it all wrong.

The U.S. food supply depends on Corn and Soy Beans.

U.S. Corn production 2006 = 270,000,000 Metric Tons. That's 10,530,000,000 Bushels. 28,431,000,000 gallons (at 2.7 gallons per bushel), 676,928,571 Barrels per Year - 1,854,599 barrels per day (feel free to check my math). Even if the U.S. could consistently produce 300,000,000 metric tons, the barrels per day would only rise to 2,060,665.

THIS IS IF WE STOPPED USING CORN FOR FOOD AND ONLY FOR FUEL.

During the most recent 4 week period the U.S. Dept. of Energy says that ethanol production was 787,000 bpd! In other words, the U.S. is currently using 42.5% of its corn crop to produce ethanol. Worse, while I have not found the smoking gun, it is my sense that I will find we have been drawing down our stocks of corn here in the U.S. If that turns out to be true... I'll skip the hyperbole (for now).

So where is the USDA in all of this? Have you seen any warning shots fired across the bow in the media? NAFC. The USDA is our first line of defense for food security - there is NO national security without food security.

More soon