Diane Rehm spends the hour talking food prices, corn ethanol and farming

This morning, the most intelligent host in talk radio, Diane Rehm, spent the first hour of her show discussing food prices in America, with a focus on ethanol's effect on the cost of just about anything edible in our society. Her guests were Bruce Babcock, professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University; Dan Morgan, special correspondent, Washington Post and fellow at the German Marshal Fund of the United States; and Lauren Etter, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

There's a lot of good stuff in the show, and if you've got the opportunity to stream it while you work or are in the kitchen or something, it's recommended. The takeaway points for me are that a.) anyone who argues that ethanol doesn't affect food prices is trying to pull a fast one and b.) we're digging ourselves into a wee bit of a hole by the way we're operating our large-scale agriculture/business/politics world. You can listen to the show here. What do you think?

[Source: NPR]

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