In America, most corn is no longer meant for eating, at least by humans. Only 20 percent of all the gazillions of ears of corn the United States grows make it into a person's mouth as corn.
The rest goes to feed animals (which do make it into people's mouth as beef and other meats) and to brew corn ethanol. In one year, we used more than 5 billion bushels of corn for ethanol, which we don't even use that much of!
But it's our corn, and we can do what we want with it, right? Well, a new report says that our hunger for ethanol drove food price volatility last year, which means that our weird, Iowa-driven energy policy is keeping people in less-wealthy countries from eating.
