Genetically Modified Corn for Ethanol Fuel Could Raise Consumer Prices

If you're looking for a booming market, look at the grain used in so many of our foods: corn. The price for corn has skyrocketed to more than $7 a bushel (which, by the way, is close to its all-time high), and the worldwide buffer supply of the stuff has shrunk to less than 750 million bushels.

Now agricultural giant Syngenta wants to market a new, genetically-modified corn that will be much easier to make into ethanol. The new corn should help lower the cost to produce ethanol, and could persuade more farmers to opt to grow ethanol corn over food corn. That type of competition could result in higher market costs for foods made with corn.