Fueling up on the food supply

Ethanol derived from corn, sugar and other crops is fueling a debate over how a plant-guzzling future will affect food and the world’s undernourished poor.

Global food and agriculture experts fear that as more countries turn to crops as an energy source, spurred by worries of global warming and oil dependency, food prices could go up and out of the reach of the very poor.
President Bush is serious in his promotion of the use of biofuels, as a way of lessening U.S. energy dependence and helping the environment.

“Your capacity to make biofuels and our desire to use biofuels will make an interesting match as we work to become less dependent on oil and better stewards of the environment,” Mr. Bush said in February at a White House meeting with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos.

He said he is committed to introducing $35 billion worth of biofuels into the U.S. market within the next 10 years.

“If you’re dependent upon oil from overseas, you have a national-security issue,” Mr. Bush said in March after touring a biofuels depot in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “In other words, dependency upon energy from somewhere else means that you are dependant upon the decision from somewhere else.”

Others call biofuels a plot against the world’s poor because it depletes the supply of cheap grain.

Washington Times