Does anyone remember just a couple short years past when we were hearing so much about how the ethanol industry was causing a shortage of food?

Food prices were up because farmers would rather make fuel than feed the hungry of the world was often the cry.

Have you heard anything lately about the cost of food going down?

If the above logic is solid, we should. When the alarm went up a couple years ago, corn was trading at roughly $6. Corn is now trading at roughly $3.40.

Wouldn't this lower corn price make the cost of food go down?

My response is, of course not. But then, I disagreed with the high-food-cost argument in the first place.

The cost of food at the grocery store or your favorite restaurant has very little to do with what price the farmer is receiving.

As an example, there is about 8 cents worth of wheat in a loaf of bread. How much are you paying for bread?

If the cost of wheat in my bread doubled to 16 cents, there would be no end to conversations on how high bread prices were going.

Really? Because of an addition 8 cents to a farmer?

The cost of food is more closely related to the cost of labor to transport, process, package, market and distribute, than to the cost of the raw product.

And, the cost is more closely related to the cost of energy to process, package and distribute throughout the food system.

Taxes, regulatory compliance, insurance, so on and so on have every bit as much, if not more, to do with how much our groceries cost than what farmers get for providing the raw products in the first place.

Going back to the corn example we started with, 2012 was a drought year in the major corn growing region of the U.S.

This caused a shortage of corn at a time when ethanol, China and the U.S. was increasing demand for corn, which raised the cost of corn in the market.

At the same time of supposed high food prices, the U.S. actually wasted more than 45 percent of the food we grew.

Food was wasted through damage from handling between the farm and our table, and improper storage and preparation.

Most importantly, we wasted this food when we threw it out because we were full or didn't like the way it looked.

Two years following the 2012 drought in the Midwest, U.S. farmers are right now in the midst of what is expected to be a historical record corn harvest.

Corn prices farmers are experiencing today are at such a low level, we did not even consider them possible not very long ago.

Watch the cost of food!

The bottom line for me centers on the abundance of food in the U.S. food system, and the relatively low price we pay for whatever our food choices might be.

Of course, some of us have the ability to pay and some of us do not.

Just try to remember, on average, the food we eat is the least expensive and safest of any country in the world.

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John Berry is the agriculture marketing educator for Penn State Extension, Lehigh County.