Ethanol Boom Could Hurt World’s Poor – Expert

The race to boost ethanol production could one day hurt food supply for many of the world’s poor, an environmental expert said on Thursday.

“This is shaping up as competition between the 800 million people in the world that own automobiles and the 2 billion low- income people in the world, many of whom are already spending over half their income on food,” Lester Brown, president of Washington D.C.-based environmental research group Earth Policy Institute, told reporters on a teleconference.
Grain prices have not risen nearly as much as sugar has, but even a small lift could hurt the billions of people who depend on grains for food and the farmers in poor countries who use it for meat, milk and egg production, said Brown.

“There could be a real scramble, not only among sectors, but also among countries for available grain supplies,” he said.

Planet Ark