How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, ... Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala

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Stephen Pizzo
4.4
by Stephen Pizzo - Oct. 1, 2008

Corn-Ethanol is the product of the convergence of politics and money -- as usual. Farmers had been losing many of their cherished subsidies over the past decade and when the energy crisis hit the agri-lobby saw corn-ethanol as a way to keep taxpayer money flowing their direction. Forget that any number of inedible crops can be made into ethanol. Politicians don't get contributions from hemp or switch grass growers. But the did and do get money from corn farmers and the many industries that feed off corn farming. That's why we have corn-ethanol, for better or for worse, and now it appears for the worst.

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