Commodities are trading down this morning on declining consumption and a short rise in the dollar against the Euro and Yen. May contracts for crude oil are down 1.8 percent since the weekend, opening this morning at $100.02 after a 7.6 percent decline at the end of last week. A Goldman Sachs report released on Thursday has crude oil falling to $90 a barrel by April on the same downward pressures that have moved the price over the last five days. Agricultural contracts follow the same deflationary pattern, with May corn falling 9.3 percent to $5.07 per bushel and May soya dropping 10.8 percent to $12.07 per bushel. This weekend's drop in corn prices is likely a small blip in their upward march, which has pushed the value of farmland up 88 percent since the beginning of the ethanol boom. A recent study from the Nebraska Farm Real Estate Market Survey found Nebraska farmland jumped 23 percent per acre 2007, and is up 88 percent from 2003. On February 1, Nebraska farmland was selling for $1,425 an acre, a price supported almost entirely by ethanol subsidies. The same can be said of U.S. biodiesel makers who, despite a $1 per gallon subsidy, have largely failed to deliver. Case in point is Kreido Biofuels, which announced a third construction delay on their 50 million gallon North Carolina plant, now slated to open in the fourth quarter. Kreido CEO Ben Binninger pegged the delays to "current adverse biodiesel market conditions" and the need to raise $25 million in additional financing. Market conditions aren't the only constraining factor for greentech these days. "Nevada is not even close to meeting its RPS," says Mark Johnson, CEO of Golden Sierra Power. That state is now reconsidering the legality of third party ownership of renewable energy systems. PPA's in Nevada have come under pressure recently from utilities in the state, who claim PPA providers are illegally competing with them for electricity sales. They have received support from the Nevada PUC. Looks like federal policy may not be the only thing throwing dirt onto a possible PPA downturn. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has raised competition concerns over the EdF bid for Iberdrola. EdF already has 5.1 million customers in the UK, and an Iberdrola takeover would make EdF the UK's second largest energy provider through Iberdrola's Scottish Power subsidiary. The nearly $140 billion deal is facing competition from E.On, as noted last week, with the German company planning to break up Iberdrola's assets. In other ongoing Iberdrola news, the New York Public Service Commission has again delayed consideration of the Spanish utility's deal for Energy East, citing the need to consider "whether that acquisition is in the public interest."