Demand likely will prompt farmers to plant more acres in corn, he said. Ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's corn crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop. The price of corn, the main feed for livestock, has driven the cost of feeding chickens up 40 percent, according to the National Chicken Council. Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department said in its monthly...

Not only will the Kool-Aid peddlers pass out the Dixie Cups again, they have added a new wrinkle to their solution: the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) as a measure to increase corn acres to keep prices low in order to expand exports and thereby provide, once again, prosperity for all. Their solution to the farm crisis of the late 1970s was to lower prices paid to farmers in order to reclaim the export volume of 1973-74 and prosperity would follow. With the...

The USDA said because soybean and corn are quite often interchangeable in parts of the Midwest and South, farmers have dropped beans to go with corn because corn prices have all but doubled over the last year. But US analysts warn the surge in corn plantings brings to the fore the emerging debate about food-versus-fuel debate: is it right to push more and more arable land away from crop growing for food and into fuel production: it's a policy the Bush Administration is going to be focusing...

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WASHINGTON: US farmers will plant their highest levels of corn since 1944 amid surging demand for ethanol fuels to replace petroleum, a government report showed yesterday. The move to corn, a key crop for ethanol used for gasoline blends, comes amid a decline of 11pc in acreage devoted to soybeans and a 20pc drop in cotton plantings. The shift to ethanol has changed the landscape for both the energy sector and agriculture as increasing amounts of corn are diverted to fuel. Bill Nelson, an...

The Agriculture Department says North Dakota farmers plan to seed 2.6 million acres of corn, up 54 percent from last year and the largest crop since record-keeping began in 1929. The price of nitrogen, which promotes plant growth and is necessary for big yields, has risen about 40 percent since late last year. Nitrogen is particularly important for corn, which is in high demand because of the booming ethanol industry. nitrogen consumption rose about 4 times in the same period, according to...

We are launching a partnership to enhance the role of ethanol fuel in our countries' energy mixes while moving to make biodiesel fuel more widely available. The spread of sugar cane, soy and other oleaginous crops for biofuels will ensure that needy farming families have the financial means to feed themselves. Thirty years of research and innovation have made my country self-sufficient in oil by replacing 40 per cent of our gasoline consumption with ethanol. We have taken an important...

farmers this year will sow the most acres of corn since World War II after record ethanol production boosted grain prices to a 10-year high. Find www.app.com stories from the past week as well as calendar events, classifieds, advertisements, Yellow Page listings, local Web sites and more all in one search. The maker of anti-theft gear for retailers said its revenue in the fourth quarter totaled $216 million, compared with the average estimate of $171 million by analysts in a Bloomberg...

The council has estimated that a total of 21 million new acres of corn will be needed in 2007 and 2008, given the rapidly growing demand for corn from the ethanol industry. The rapid increase in input costs has already shown up in wholesale prices for poultry and will undoubtedly be passed on to consumers, sooner rather than later. That industry has 114 plants in operation, seven being expanded, and 80 under construction, nearly all of which run exclusively on corn. But much of the...