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A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) helped confirm what county Farm Bureau leaders across Texas have known for some time.

“Ethanol production has no significant impact on food prices,” says Blanco County Farm Bureau S & T Adrian Schulze. “That’s what the CBO report found and that’s what we’ve been saying from the start. Considering a corn farmer will earn just a dime off a $4 box of corn flakes, there are a lot of other factors involved when it comes to rising food costs.”

Among those, Schulze said, are the costs of energy, labor, packaging and demand, to name a few.

All impact food prices more than ethanol production, the CBO report found. Released in late April, the CBO report found corn prices from expanded ethanol production only contributed between 0.5 and 0.8 of a percentage point to the cost of food. Meanwhile, food prices rose, on average, roughly 5.1 percent between April 2007 and April 2008.

The truly troubling part, however, is that food prices are still on the rise, despite everything else having fallen. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the cost of food has increased another 4.3 percent during the last year.

“For all those who pointed the finger at farmers last year when our grocery prices started to rise, I hope we will someday hear an apology,” Schulze said.

In the meantime, Texas Farm Bureau will be doing its part to monitor grocery prices across the Lone Star State with its very own Grocery Price Watch, launched just last month. That initial survey of store shelf prices helped establish a cost baseline that the state’s largest farm organization will monitor quarterly.