“Give me land, lots of land . . . “

An editorial today in the New York Times focused on one of the negative consequences of the corn ethanol boom — a boom fueled by federal government subsidies and tax breaks. The NYT deplores the corn farmers’ demand for more cropland to be plowed under from Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program.

But that’s not the only problem with the government’s distortion of the market through taxpayer-funded ethanol support. Dennis Avery’s monograph for CEI last fall points out some far-reaching consequences of government mandating fuel for food.