Battles in the ethanol wars.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 4:01pm.
I picked on Fortune Magazine the other week, so maybe I shouldn't be at them so soon again. But it's hard to ignore them when they hang a big target. This time it's a story about General Wesley Clark, retired four-star general and NATO commander, and one-time presidential candidate. In February, Clark signed on as co-chairman of the ethanol trade group, Growth Energy.
He's also on the board of Juhl Wind, a Dutch turbine maker, is on the board - and very active with - Emergya Wind Technologies, CEO of Wesley Clark Associates, and chairman of Rodman and Renshaw, a New York investment bank.
When Fortune reporter Jon Birger interviewed Clark, he focused on his Growth Energy work. From the tone of the article, it seemed as though Clark was paying most of his attention to the battle to save ethanol from the crazy ups and downs in the oil and corn markets, internal sabotage by Archer Daniel Midlands, and outright hostility from the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Birger's article in the July 6 edition is here:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/23/news/economy/wesley_clark_fights_for_ethanol.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009070217
A June 24 TV interview by Poppy Harlow with General Clark set a different tone. In that interview, Clark was all about wind energy and Emergya. The interview was interlaced with file footage that was supposed to tie in with the storyline, and sometimes did. That interview is here: http://money.cnn.com/video/fortune/2009/06/24/f_wesley_clark_wind.fortune/
The Fortune article was much meatier than the thrown-together TV piece, but neither reporter asked the question that begged to be asked: "Are you really just a figurehead for all these groups? If not, how do you keep it all together?"
Oh, and here's the kicker. In a photo taken to illustrate the article, General Clark is shown holding two bushels of corn. Bicolored sweet corn.
Some people keep alpacas for the sheer fun of it, while others use the South American cousin-to-the-camel for shear profit. Alpacas are sheared once a year and the fleece - alpacans call it "fiber" - can weigh from two to four pounds per animal. Fiber sells for $5 to $8 an ounce, which certainly helps with the feed bill. There's an interesting story about alpaca shearing in our current issue, written by Lancaster Farming reporter Michelle Kunjapu.
Grow your own racer and win big money in Easton, Pa. (Thanks, Anne.) http://buylocalpa.org/event/view/481
