July 30, 2007 (LPAC)-- Archer Daniels Midland Co., the largest ethanol producer in the U.S., said its net income for the three months ending June 30, more than doubled. Although the cost (to them) for corn was higher, sales were more than enough to make up the difference. Corn processing operating profit fell 16%, but sales jumped 28% to $12.21 billion. Recently, company executives said they were preparing to enter the sugar-cane-ethanol business in Brazil. The company is exploring a variety of strategies, ranging from building sugar-cane mills and ethanol plants from the ground up to acquiring sugar-cane companies.

The push for ethanol, made by processing corn into a burnable fuel for autos, has caused a doubling of the price of corn in the last year, and made a major staple foodstuff unaffordable for many of the world's poorest families. Justified as reducing the US dependence on foreign oil, and rationalized by legions of environmentally challenged individuals as an aid to ending the Iraq War, the ethanol program has thus traded one horseman of the Apocolypse: War, for another: Famine.