How can they claim with a straight face that it is all bio fuels and not attribute the majority of this to the cost of energy. Energy is used in every step of food production starting with fertilizer (produced from oil) and then the planting/tilling/harvest of the food. Then transportation to send it to be processed and then the energy to process it. Then the energy to send it to market. On and on and on.

I really don’t like corn ethanol but it is just a stepping stone to get were we need to be with other forms of renewable energy. Reasonable studies have shown that the cost of producing ethanol keeps the cost of gasoline down reducing the typical energy bill much more then it increases the cost of food. This produces a net gain for the consumer.

Granted that the ratio of energy consumption/food consumption is much different in the developing world so one countries 3% increase in in food is another countries 75%. Keeping in mind that most studies attribute the vast majority of these cost increases to basic energy costs not bio-fuels.

In my opinion this is just sensational news. If you think just a little it just does not add up when we still have a net surplus of corn. Human consumption is > 10% of all the field corn we produce. The same corn that is used to make bio-fuels. The rest goes to animal feed. Any corn used to make ethanol can still be used as perfectly good animal feed in the form of dried distillers grains. In fact, in Europe it is the preferred form over raw corn. It actually makes sense to remove the ethanol sugars before feeding to animals. Studies have shown they do better after the sugars are removed leaving behind proteins.