Essentially, ethanol is a taxpayer funded handout program for not only the auto manufacturers and oil companies, but also for the
huge agri-industrial corporations like Archer Daniels Midland, which controls about a third of the ethanol market.
While corn prices are way up and the USDA says farmers can expect prices to be double what they were last year
, it's mainly the large corporations that stand to benefit from ethanol - to the tune of about $700 million next year estimated for ADM alone.
As Tom Philpott figures in a December 2006 Grist Magazine article, based on last quarter's corporate earnings,
every dollar of ADM's corporate profit from ethanol costs the public about $2.85. And none of this includes local and state incentives like property tax abatements, etc.
For instance, Indiana has given over $7 million in incentives alone to Louis Dreyfus Agricultural Industries LLC, a French company, to build the world's largest ethanol plant in Indiana.
Car won't start with e85
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Originally Posted by ndbalt07
