[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Lamont Cranston

From what I've read, and in the links I provided, it's the Mexican corn and maize being bought to make Ethanol, leaving less of it for the poor to make food.

not exactly.

tortillas are made with WHITE corn. ethanol with YELLOW (the one that nasty "taco shells" are made of).

as the price of yellow corn increases to meet the demand of ethanol, the price of white corn, which is indexed in mexico to the international price of yellow corn, increases along.

then the government tried to put some price controls on white corn, but it's not enforced by law, so people are charging more anyway.

but then having a price cap would drive producers to grow yellow corn for export, which creates scarcity & makes the price controls untenable.

so mexicans are looking for other staples, but they are not nearly as nutritious as the tortilla, because the process of tortilla making among other thing releases vitamin B.

the result of eating say flour tortillas on a daily basis as opposed to corn is malnutrition.

BUT

this is not simply supply and demand. there are protectionisms in place.

1) mexico did not traditionally let cheaper american corn into its market, but it had to open up with nafta

2) the u.s. don't allow cheaper ethanol from brazilian sugar into its markets, thus driving up the price of corn

complicated, huh?

moreover

3) corn seed imported from the u.s. is genetically manipulated by monsanto et. al., as opposed to the more diverse genetic pool of mexican corn.

it goes on & on. it's more interesting than the x files.