A great piece here in Forbes magazine which sizes up the state of the biofuels industry over the last couple of years.

I was particularly interested to learn that 50% of this year's US corn crop will go to making ethanol. Government mandated targets for the rising participation of ethanol and biodiesel is clearly driving a demand for biofuel feedstocks not seen before. And this article says one way to play that demand is to buy into a fertilizer company called Mosaic and SunOpta, who hopes to be a player in the emerging cellulosic biofuel industry.

The first idea is definitely original - a bit like selling shovels to gold prospecters in 19th Century America. But I'm not aware - other than in Brazil - of how much virgin land is being used for biofuel crops or whether it is merely replacing existing food crops. So I wonder how much more fertilizer really will be used?

Meanwhile if SunOpta really does produce cellulosic biofuel in scale, then this will presumably reduce demand for fertilizer. So in a sense, these two stocks could hedge each other. Mosaic for the short-term and SunOpta for the long-term?