Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Tom Vilsack…has the merit of being unsatisfactory to both extremes of the farm-policy debates.”

Gal Luft on Analyst-Network.com: “The sharp drop in world prices for oil and grain precipitated by the past few months’ economic turmoil has literally, if probably temporarily, taken the energy out of last summer’s vitriolic “food-versus-fuel” debate. Suddenly, we’re not hearing the denunciations about how ethanol is taking corn from the world’s hungry in order to put it in the gas tanks of the world’s rich. Back when oil cost three- and four-dollars-per-barrel, the increased use of ethanol was blamed for high food prices, food riots and starvation of the poor. Senior UN official Jean Ziegler called the use of food crops for fuel a “crime against humanity.” Anti-American demagogues like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro seized the opportunity to pile on to the anti-ethanol jihad…The past few weeks have clearly demonstrated that all this was a farce.”

An editorial in the New York Times: “Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Agriculture Department has the merit of being unsatisfactory to both extremes of the farm-policy debates. Zealous advocates of sustainable agriculture question his support of biotechnology, while partisans of the status quo find him insufficiently loyal to the system of farm subsidies. That leaves him with a very large center of support. He’ll need it to move this country’s broken agricultural policy in a new direction.”

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