Supermarkets and Service Stations Now Competing for Grain

Cars, not people, will claim most of the
increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons
in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars
in the United States, leaving only 6 million tons to satisfy the
world

In agricultural terms, the world appetite
for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a
25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.
The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26
people.

Investors
are jumping on the highly profitable biofuel-bandwagon so fast that
hardly a day goes by without another ethanol distillery or biodiesel
refinery being announced somewhere in the world. The amount of corn
used in U.S. ethanol distilleries has tripled in five years, jumping
from 18 million tons in 2001 to an estimated 55 million tons from the
2006 crop.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update55.htm