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J.D. Heyes

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"In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars," says Lester Brown, writing in Foreign Policy magazine in January. "That's enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest."


It must be a "West" thing because the Europeans are following a similar policy. Though most cars in Europe run on diesel fuel, "there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil," writes Brown. That has led to less land being utilized to grow food and the cutting and clearing of rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia, to harvest "fuel" for palm oil plantations.


Some experts say that using more corn in the U.S. isn't driving up food costs, and it's not a problem for the global food supply, they insist.




No big deal, says an industry insider.


"Every credible study has clearly found the effect of ethanol policies is negligible on the price of corn," says Monte Shaw, president of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.


Not so fast, say researchers and economists from Purdue University. According to a report released in July, demand for biofuels (corn=ethanol) in the U.S. is driving up food prices, and that phenomenon isn't likely to change for at least the next two years.


The study's authors said that in 2005, about 10 percent of the U.S. corn crop went to ethanol production; by 2010, that climbed to 27 percent. And, since the Obama administration's official policy is "no new drilling" and alternative energy automobiles are still years away at best, the official policy of burning our food supply will remain for the foreseeable future .


As the world goes hungry and food prices climb, the world's breadbasket has chosen to burn up enough of a single commodity to feed hundreds of millions of people. That's a pretty big deal.



Aug. 19, 2011