Grain

Remember the oat bran craze? In the late 1980s, several published studies touting the benefits of oat bran for lowering cholesterol had health professionals singing its praises. Food companies were only too happy to accommodate the newfound demand, trotting out oat bran garlic bread, oat bran muffins, oat bran animal cookies, oat bran brownies, even oat bran-dusted potato chips and doughnuts.

Corn is a key element of the U.S. food supply. It is what dairy cows eat to make milk and hens consume to lay eggs. It fattens cattle, hogs and chickens before slaughter. It makes soda sweet. As the building block of ethanol, it is now also a major component of auto fuel. And that may signal trouble ahead.

When a French-style patisserie opened on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles six years ago, owner Julien Bohbot thought the competition for his small Delice Bakery would come from the other kosher bakeries down the street. But now Bohbot is competing with bakers from Paris and Pretoria -- all in search of flour. Short supplies have raised the price of wheat worldwide and sparked protests over the cost of tortillas in Mexico and pasta in Italy.

The U.S. Agriculture Department sent shudders through much of the food industry Monday when it released estimates that showed farmers would plant 8% less corn this year. With corn prices already pushing up food prices, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Assn. called the projection "alarming" and warned that the estimate bodes ill for consumers at the supermarket.

Artist Jeff Foye savors the bitter flavor and floral aromas that emanate from a well-crafted beer. Lately, the San Pedro resident has experienced an unexpected sensation when he reaches for a brew -- the unpleasant taste of rising prices. A worldwide shortage of hops -- a key ingredient for the pale ales Foye likes so much -- and rising prices for malted barley have pushed up the cost of imbibing a tall cold one. These days, he's paying $9.

While Myanmar's military regime Friday restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the government was exporting tons of rice through its main port. Four of the five berths at the port of Thilawa for oceangoing container vessels were empty, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter.

The farm crisis that has divided the agricultural powerhouse of Argentina for months took a dramatic turn Thursday, when the Senate voted against the government's incendiary new tax on grain exports. The decisive vote was cast by the government's own vice president after an 18-hour Senate debate, stunning observers and igniting a political crisis. The higher grain levies have been in effect via presidential edict, despite questions about their constitutionality.

The government rescinded Friday a controversial tax increase on grain exports that had sparked months of protests and bared deep divisions in one of the world's major food-producing nations. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner pulled back the tax without comment a day after a stunning rejection by the Senate made possible by a crucial "no" vote by her own vice president.

Rising costs for fuel, feed and fertilizer propelled grain prices to all-time highs in June, raising the overall price of crops and livestock by 16% this year compared with last year, a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showed Thursday. Grain prices gained 42% for the year overall. Corn sold for an average of $5.61 a bushel in June, up 69% from $3.32 in 2007. Soybeans sold for $14.20 a bushel, nearly double last year's figure of $7.56. Corn went for just $2.

Curtis Raines describes himself as "just a dumb old farmer" who's not afraid to ask an obvious question: Why grow corn for fuel when it could be used to feed hungry people? "That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me," Raines said. The 64-year-old Oklahoma Panhandle farmer is growing a 1,000-acre plot of switchgrass, billed as the world's largest of its type, to test whether the native plant can replace corn in making ethanol.