Corn 101

As I've gotten older, I've realized there are a lot of ignorant people out there. They're everywhere. Unfortunately, these ignorant people can also be found in the national media, and even in the White House.

Ok, at this point, you're probably wondering what this has to do with corn. Well, let me just tell you.

Most of you have heard me rambling for months over the Food vs Fuel issue, and all of the misinformation that is out there about the topic in regards to the use of corn to make ethanol. I'm not going to explain all of that right now - frankly, because I'm tired to explaining it.

Here's the bottom line: American corn farmers are producing more than enough corn to meet both our food and our fuel needs. Corn ethanol was never meant to be a solution to our oil crisis, but rather part of the solution. Ethanol is not causing starvation in third world countries. Ethanol is not causing your food prices to go up. Ethanol is not the devil.

Ethanol is saving you up to $0.42/gallon at the gas pump.

While you're pondering this thought, visit www.TexasPriceCheck.com and educate yourself.

Ok, back to the lesson. A lot of people, including the national media, think that all corn that is grown ends up on your plate. Well, they're wrong and ignorant.

There's two types of corn, folks. There's field corn.


And there's food corn.


Notice how the food corn is white and the field corn is yellow. They're different, with different purposes.


Food corn represents a very small percentage of the actual amount of corn that is grown. In Texas, there's actually very little food corn grown. The food corn in the man's hands above represents the only handful of food corn grown in Texas. Ok, that's a lie. I don't really know the exact number of bushels, but it's not very much comparatively. Food corn is what actually ends up on your table.

This food corn came from one of our board member's farms in South Texas in the town of Castroville. Castroville is about 20 miles west of San Antonio. I'm pretty sure it's one of the hottest places on the planet. It's also about the only area in Texas that grows food corn.

On the other hand, there's field corn. It's yellow and very corn-looking. This type of corn is what is fed to livestock mostly. Over 90 percent of the corn grown in Texas is used for livestock feed. None of this is consumed by humans, that is until they eat the beef or poultry that consumed the field corn. Texas grows about 3 million bushels of corn each year.

Follow me?


Field corn is also what is used to produce ethanol. When you produce ethanol, you also produce a byproduct, called distillers grains. The handy thing about these distillers grains is you can feed it to livestock and still retain all the protein from the corn. Another cool thing, is some ethanol plants, such as Panda Ethanol in Hereford, Texas, are using poo poo from cattle in the feedlots that are right at their back doors as a fuel to power the ethanol plant. So, it all goes in a cycle: use the corn to produce ethanol, use the ethanol to drive your car and the distillers grains it produces to feed your cattle, then use their crap to turn right back around and power the ethanol production process. To see the whole process, click right HERE.


Corn. It's the new "green".