Farmers are largely left out when higher food prices are caused by market demands for ethanol, a top state farm official said Wednesday.

Addressing the Vicksburg Lions Club, Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation president David Waide said those involved in shipping still get a lion’s share of money stemming from higher transportation costs.

Speaking in Vicksburg Wednesday to Lions Club members, Waide also said economists have measured the state’s crop of cotton, corn and soybeans at more than $1.9 billion in 2007. Soybeans and rice enjoyed record yields, while corn — still the chief method of producing ethanol — was planted on more acreage than any other time since the 1960s.

Ethanol is a fuel or fuel additive distilled from farm crops, usually corn, and has been touted as one of a number of alternatives to fossil fuels. Despite the growing industry’s efforts to increase production capacity, refiners have not increased capacity to blend it with gasoline.

Technology to produce ethanol is evolving, Waide said, with methods to produce it from cellulose expected to “take hold” within the next five years because of an expected lowering of the costs involved.

Waide defended consistent 13 percent allocations to agriculture in the federal budget, expected to remain that way in the 2007 Farm Bill which could come up for a final vote by the U.S. Senate this month.

Current subsidies to farmers “provide you the lowest cost for food of any consumer in the world,” Waide said.

Waide, a West Point farmer and former Clay County supervisor, is chief of an organization with 227,749 Mississippi families, with about 1,800 from Warren County, he said.

Heading the list of issues that the federation will support in the next session of the Legislature is one dealing with eminent domain laws.

In 2005, a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowed for individual states to decide whether public entities could take over private lands for redevelopment through eminent domain proceedings.

As was the case when a similar effort failed to garner a gubernatorial signature, Waide said, the federation will seek specific definitions to those attempts, such as utilities, roads, schools and rail development.

“It has to be good for the public in general,” Waide said, adding farm land is naturally assessed lower than adjacent land.

Also, the federation will pay attention to any full-scale examination of the Mississippi tax code, something Gov. Haley Barbour has said will figure into solving the debate on grocery and cigarette taxes.

The organization supports keeping all tax exemptions for producers and other agriculture interests.

“Ag has a right to do business,” Waide said.

Though an officially nonpartisan, issue-driven advocacy group for rural residents, internal polling showed 60 percent of farm bureau members voted in the Nov. 6 general election, Waide said.

Statewide, turnout fell by more than 200,000 compared to the elections in 2003.