Ethanol industry boosting corn planting

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The ethanol industry and high export demand is pushing U.S. acreage dedicated to corn and corn prices towards records.

Chris Hurt, Purdue University agricultural economist, is predicting that corn prices will eclipse $3 a bushel for the 2007 marketing year and could threaten the 1995 record of $3.24 a bushel.

"In terms of acreage, I've been suggesting that we may have to push acreage up to 88 million to 89 million acres of corn," Hurt said Monday in a statement. "That would be a 10 million-acre increase from 2006 and would put us at the highest acreage planted to corn in the United States since 1946. We'd be looking at a 60-year phenomenon."

About 2.1 billion bushels of the 2006 corn crop is going into ethanol production at the 106 ethanol plants across the nation.