Kate Bolz and Doug Nuttelman live at opposite ends of the food supply line.

Bolz is a community educator with Nebraska Appleseed in Lincoln and part of a food-security coalition that wrestles with the issue of hunger on a daily basis.

Nuttelman is a Stromsburg dairyman who’s just as dedicated to keeping daylight between the price he’s paid for milk and the price of the feed his cows eat to produce it.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2007, Bolz and her peers are losing ground.

For the time being, at least, Nuttelman is gaining.

From Bolz’s perspective, “I just spoke with a mother of two last week who wasn’t making it to the end of the month.”

Meanwhile, said Nuttelman, “the demand for dairy products is pretty good.”

Milk sold at the retail level is part of the annual survey of prices at the Thanksgiving dinner table conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

This year, the average price of a gallon of milk at the store is $3.88 a gallon. A year ago, it was $2.93.

“That’s an extra dollar that all food stamp clients will have to come up with to make their grocery bill work,” said Bolz.

Overall, the Farm Bureau survey said the bill to feed 10 people comes to $42.26, up $4.16 from last year’s average, but still affordable from its point of view.

As usual, the farm is not the first place to look to see where that money went. In fact, Nuttelman will need to weigh the cost implications carefully before he commits to expanding the size of his herd.

That’s because the cost of corn is also up more than a dollar a bushel from last year and good alfalfa hay is hard to find below $140 a ton.

“Usually, high prices will bring on milk supply,” Nuttelman said. “I don’t think it will bring on as much as in the past because input costs are so much higher than they were a year ago.”

Rising prices for what people eat are much more the focus of news headlines on a day devoted to eating excess.

The Consumer Price Index for food has risen recently from the 2.5-3 percent range toward 4.5 percent, and many analysts have been quick to make a connection to the increasing portion of corn routed to ethanol production.

Turkeys big enough to feed a family gathering of 10 cost an average of $17.63. The price tag on a 16-pound bird was at $15.70 a year ago.

John Urbanchuk acknowledges corn is a big part of a turkey’s diet.

But Urbanchuk, a teacher at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and director of an economic consultant group called LECG, disputes just about every other suggestion that grain-based fuels are to blame for lightening pocketbooks.

He said the energy costs associated with transporting and refrigerating a wide range of foods are a much bigger factor in retail prices than the dent ethanol has made in the corn supply.

The corn price can be expected to go back down, he said, because producers will respond by planting more corn.

“But the point of the matter is that, when you look at corn as a contribution to food prices, its contribution is very, very small and pales in comparison to the contribution from energy.”

Urbanchuk isn’t the only one interested in driving that point home as consumers unload their grocery sacks and recheck their cash-register tapes.

As Thanksgiving arrives, the Nebraska Corn Board stands ready with a news release headlined “Cost of energy outpaces impact of corn on food prices.”

Spokesman Randy Klein handles follow-up questions, including one about why defending corn’s reputation against ethanol critics matters so much.

“Because it affects people’s perception of both the corn industry and corn farmers,” Klein replied. “It also affects their perceptions of what they buy at retail and particularly ethanol.”

There’s only 5 cents worth of corn in the typical 14-ounce box of cornflakes that typically sells for $2.80.

“You always have to keep in mind, in the whole scenario, that U.S. consumers are the best fed, the cheapest fed, and that they have access to the safest food supply in the world. And we don’t see that changing.

“At 9.9 percent of income, no other place in the world can match that.”

Appleseed advocate Bolz measures the effect of higher food prices from the neediest end of consumer ranks.

The average food-stamp recipient gets about 96 cents a day to eat, she said. “So when you think along the lines of trying to create a lunch for yourself in dollars, if food costs increase, like milk prices have, it really matters to you.”

But she’s not going to suggest hunger is a result of a shortage of food production. “The problem of hunger has consistently not been production,” she said. “It’s been distribution.”

Dairy producer Nuttelman said ethanol does influence his costs, but he also sees it as a positive factor in holding down energy costs. “Somehow we’ve got to produce enough fuel so that the gas and everything else doesn’t get way out of sight for us.“

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net