Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman finally acknowledged that using ethanol based on corn has been a huge factor in the outrageous prices of food across the world.

His comment that we should begin "moving away gradually" from ethanol that was made from corn was a good, but very late in the game.

"As we pursue diversity in our overall energy mix, we must also pursue diversity in our biofuels," Bodman said at a conference in Alexandria, Va. "This means moving away gradually from ethanol produced from foodstocks like corn."

The subsidy of corn to produce ethanol in the U.S. has been one of the key factors in artificially inflating the cost of food globally. That's always what happens when politicians think they have a good thing going that will get them votes next time around.

The use of food like corn to develop biofuels has even been called a "crime against humanity" by the U.N., as Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, recently made that assertion.

With the recent discoveries of several large oil fields by Petrobras of Brazil, the shale oil in the U.S., and the area next to the Canadian Sands which may hold close to as much oil as the Sands themselves, the idea that we are in a Peak Oil crises is a myth made up by those with personal agendas or ideologies. That doesn't even include the approximate 10 billion barrels in ANWR in Alaska.

While the already tired idea of cellulosic ethanol is still being thrown around as the hope, the reality is it's extremely expensive and only wishful thinking at this time. Cellulosic ethanol is the making of ethanol from materials like wood chips.

"The reason that cellulosic fuels like ethanol are not on the market in large volumes is not because we don't know how to make it in commercial quantities," Bodman said. "The production process at present is too complex and too costly, but I am confident that we can find the way forward."

Quite honestly, I don't care about Bodman's confidence one bit. Right now there needs to be more than a gradual move away from ethanol, it needs to be radical. Now people around the world are suffering from food they can't afford because farmers in the U.S. and Europe have been weaned to the subsidy's that come with growing corn for ethanol; another of the usual "unintended consequences" from government interference in the free market.

Another thing the government needs to do is quit listening to the so-called advisors or activists who have no idea what they're talking about, and who push to get their agendas funded and passed into law by a government eager to please those people.

Ethanol is dead on arrival in the U.S., let's keep it that way. There's plenty of oil available, and soon to be available, which can keep people supplied for a long time. That gives us time to try legitimate and honest experiments that have real chances at long-term, positive effect.