Who or what determines the price of grain?

when you sell your grain to the elevator at harvest they pay you what ever the price of corn is at the chicago board of trade at that time unless you have already contracted it to the elevator sometime early in the year. there is always a difference in the price the elevator pays the farmer and what the chicago board of trade is and this is called the basis. when corn was 2.00 dollars per bushel in years past the basis maybe as little as 5 cents off chicago. last fall as corn prices climbed and another record breaking harvest was produced the basis went to 1.10 per bushel. generally the basis gets larger in the fall when the crop is harvested. farmers are not like most businesses. farmers do not tell grain companies how much they want for their grain but ask them how much will you give me for my grain. no, ethanol and biodiesel is not running the price of food up. corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel are only a very small part of the reason for food costs increases. the cost of energy and the declining value of the dollar are the main culprits for rising grain prices in the u.s. plus the the fact that we in the u.s. are now competing for grain from china, india and many other asian countries whose standard of living has been rising and are now able to buy more food. if grain prices fall back to levels seen for the last 20 years farmers in this country will be wiped out completely because the cost of seed, chemicals, fertilizer and fuel has incresed dramatically along with the price of grain. if the u.s.a. does not embrace biofuels and other alternative forms of energy we will be sending more and more money out of our country than is coming in and will eventually be very detrimental to all of us. what if the terrorists countries one day say they want to sell their oil to some other country or they run out of oil,then what will we put in ours cars.trucks, planes and trains. probably what will happen is the biofuel industry will be killed off by the oil companies like all other alternative energy programs have been and we will still be buying more and more oil from the middle east and the oil shieks will build more and more palaces for their princes and more and more money will flow to terrorists.