True or false: 10 percent of US corn crop used for ant repellent

Well, that’s an absurd headline, isn’t it? False, false and false.

It’s ridiculous, misleading and harmful to conclude that 10 percent of the US corn harvest is used for ant repellent – just because 10 percent of the US corn crop is shipped to starch processing plants that happen, amongst their many products, to provide starch for use in the ant repellent industry.

In the world of formal logic, it’s the “fallacy of the affirmative disjunct”. Interestingly, no less a firm than PriceWaterhouseCoopers fell for it, in a report they prepared for the National Council of Chain Restaurants, on ethanol’s impact on corn prices, released this week.

The fallacy

Here’s how the fallacy works.

1. God is omnipotent or God sees everything.
2. God sees everything.
3. Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

In the PwC version, here’s how it reads:

1. Corn sent to ethanol plants is used for ethanol production or for food production.
2. Corn sent to ethanol production is used for ethanol production.
3. Therefore, corn sent to ethanol plants is not used for food production.

Arise, ye fact checkers

So, let’s roll out the fact checkers. In fact, ethanol producers, by weight, produce as much grain for cattle feed as they produce ethanol. The process they use is fractionation, and in this case only the corn starch fraction is used for ethanol production. The protein and oil fractions are used for other products.

For this reason, you can imagine that the American Coalition for Ethanol got pretty steamed up over the release of a PwC report funded and released by the National Council of Chain Restaurants on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

Just as any minister of organized religion would raise an objection to a conclusion such as “God is not omnipotent” that was based in the same fallacy.

Fuzzy logic and the chain restaurant perspective

ACE Executive Vice President Brian Jennings says the council of chain restaurants is ‘out to lunch’ on the RFS.

“It appears the National Council of Chain Restaurants invested in a report that would give them an excuse to raise food prices. Contrary to their claims, a recent fact-based analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and EPA showed that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has virtually no impact on food prices, so we encourage the media to take this fast-food study with as much salt as you’d find in one of their meals,” said Jennings.

“In denying recent requests to waive the RFS on November 16,” Jennings added, ” EPA said it analyzed 500 different market scenarios and found that in 89 percent, “we see no impacts from the RFS program at all” on corn, food and fuel prices.

“In the 11 percent where there was an impact, EPA said the RFS on average increased the price of corn by just 7 cents a bushel. In consultation with the USDA, EPA also estimated how these projected changes in corn prices would influence U.S. food prices. They found that a $0.07/bushel decrease in corn prices would result in a 0.04% decrease in the food consumer price index (CPI). Furthermore, a $0.07/bushel decrease in corn prices would result in a reduction of U.S. household expenditures on food equal to $2.59 in 2012/2013.”

Taking the mickey out of fast food

Jennings also noted there are consequences for the huge amount of ‘food away from home’ eaten by Americans at chain restaurants.

“Americans notoriously pay much more for eating out, not because of ethanol or even the food served at chain restaurants, but because of marketing, transportation, labor, and other expenses driven by the price of oil,” said Jennings.

“We refuse to take criticism from an industry that charges consumers four times what fast-food companies pay for food, and then literally throws millions of dollars’ worth of food in the trash every year. Our industry manufactures more than 33 million metric tons of distillers grain every year, which is enough cattle feed to provide every person in the U.S. with 4 quarter-pound hamburgers every week for a year.”

Food waste vs fuel

A November 27 report by Eliza Barclay for Morning Edition of National Public Radio (NPR) quoted Jean Schwab, a senior analyst in the waste division of EPA.

“Food waste is huge,” said Schwab. “Food waste is now the number one material that goes into landfills and incinerators.” In the same story NPR reported that about three cents of every dollar consumers spend on food away from home ends up in the trash. That story can be read by clicking here.

Let’s look at that last number.

It says here  that the top 15 restaurant chanins in the US generate $115 billion in sales. That’s right on $1000 per household. If NPR is right about the cost of food waste, $30 per household is going into the trash.

Compared to $2.59 per household in ethanol impact.

Hmmm. $30 vs $2.59. That says a lot.