For anyone interested in exploring the dark side of the hydrogenous moon, Richard Manning has an article currently on the shelves in Harper's Magazine
(The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq), which paints a bleak picture of what increased ethanol production (among other factors) has done to America's natural resources & ecology. (Here's an excerpt and a heads-up on his book.) On the surface, Manning sounds a lot like a man who is convinced that the world is simply going to hell. However, there are salient points in his article about "catastrophic" agriculture and the disastrous effects of nitrogen run-off into the Mississippi. The point: large agricultural conglomerates are not the Green saviors they are currently marketing themselves as. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is not the "Supermarket to the World"; Exxon and Shell and BP Amoco are not looking for alternative energy out of an altruistic yearning to "make the world a better place". Even so, while this latest article makes some excellent points, on a micro-level, the devastating article published in 1999 by Harpers on the sugar industry still is the best I've read to date on the topic of agricultural malfeasance. Of course, regardless of the evidence, the corporate no-necks will continue to issue their flaccid denials of "any wrongdoing".