Using an E. coli bacteria that eats corn sugar and discharges a key Sorona ingredient will save DuPont 25%.
Refineries of the future will spew out chemicals and plastics from corn sugar or wood pulp instead of from fossil fuels.
Walking through his lab a decade ago, he had an epiphany: He envisioned an entire process by which he could feed corn sugar to lactobacilli that would exude ideal, highly concentrated lactic acid.
The latest round is that the corn industry wants to change the usual name from HFCS (which has bad connotations now that half the country seems to be blaming it for obesity, something caused by an excess of caloric consumption over caloric use, not any specific foodstuff) to corn sugar.
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Corn and sugar, for example, are used extensively in biofuels - in the US, 40% of all corn production goes into making ethanol.
Much of the inventory is, in fact, soybeans, corn and sugar and is carried at fair market values.
Shortages of rice, corn and sugar have been covered by imports.
And the recent boom in commodity prices, driven by rapid growth in demand from China (along with the diversion of corn and sugar into to alcohol production), largely explains why total support fell from 37 percent of farm income in 1986 to 18 percent in 2010.
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But this is like saying the market has freely chosen to sweeten products using high fructose corn syrup while ignoring corn subsidies and sugar tariffs.
Big Corn and Big Sugar are locked in a legal and public relations fight in the US over a plan to change the name of a corn-based sweetener that has gotten a bad name.
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He admits that it is not simple to pull the sugars out of non-food material like pulp or wood waste, but says that even factoring in the extraction process, the final cost should be lower than using corn starch or sugar cane, both of which are much higher-priced commodities.
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Unlike the U.S., ethanol is made from sugar cane rather than corn, and the growing use of sugar as a fuel in Brazil and other countries in recent years helped drive the price of the commodity.
"All of the candy on the market contains sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, a form of sugar that doesn't digest well in the body, " says Armand Hammer (no relation to the late industrialist), president and chief executive of privately held Innovative Candy Concepts .
Nationalizing farms and food distribution firms has meant long lines at supermarkets with half empty shelves due to the constant shortages of basic goods, including corn, coffee and sugar.
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Indeed, if I were to describe the sugar, corn syrup and pectin lozenge that, above all others, might conjure Proustian memories of childhood Easters, it would be the purple jelly bean.
Despite the increase in the volume of meat, sugar, corn and soy products, these farming methods have resulted in health risks due to the increased use of antibiotics, pesticides and herbicides.
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Brazil, another large ethanol producer, uses sugar instead of corn for ethanol production.
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Called C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical plants.
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When the case eventually goes to trial, both sides undoubtedly will have well-credentialed experts offering completely opposite opinions on the health risks of corn syrup vs. cane sugar.
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Some of the products sold as honey have been bulked up by sugar, water and corn syrup.
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According to a JP Morgan report, commodities like corn, coffee, cotton and sugar are at their lowest stock-to-use ratios in decades.
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The most common Genetically Engineered crops are Corn, Soy, Canola, Sugar Beets, Cotton, Hawaiian Papaya, Alfalfa, and Squash (zucchini and yellow).
Sugar, wheat, corn, you name it, and it has probably seen some very bullish trade this year, but every pundit and his sister is forecasting higher food prices in 2011.
However, industry sources believe exposure the ETN was holding to corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar futures was nearing limits that might attract the attention of regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The microbe, discovered by microbiologists from the University of Massachusetts at the Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts, digests and ferments a wide variety of feedstocks, including corn stover, corn cobs, switchgrass, and sugar cane bagasse.
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The note, which was created in March 2008, is similar to the iPath DJ-UBS note in that it takes long positions in agricultural futures, tracks the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Food Index and is heavily weighted towards sugar, soybeans and corn.
He cited the U.S. subsidies for corn-based ethanol and tariffs on sugar cane-based ethanol from Brazil.
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We massively subsidize corn-based ethanol, even though sugar-based ethanol appears to be far more efficient and less costly.
In commodities, crop prices rose sharply, with corn up more than 6% and sugar at a three-year high on fears of a poor harvest in some parts of the globe.
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