An item in yesterday’s Times reported that this year will be the first in which more American corn will be used for making motor fuel than will be used for making animal feed.
What surprised me a bit about this story is that so little corn is consumed directly by humans – between them fuel & animal feed account for over 80% of the crop.
However another item in the same edition of the paper showed how other developments work towards ameliorating the disaster this might otherwise turn into in the form of higher food prices.
There are astonishing improvements in animal productivity: American sows are producing ever more piglets – an eye-watering average of 10.03 per litter in the three months to May 31, compared with 8 or 9 fifteen years ago. So they are producing more future pork per pound of corn than they used to.
I wonder however if they, like chickens, are destined to live lives shorter than those of their ancestors because they reach their killing weight more quickly.
