Trouble brews in Germany as biofuel boom jacks up price of beer

Like most Germans, brewer Helmut Erdmann is all for the fight against global warming. Unless, that is, it drives up the price of his beer.

And that is exactly what is happening to Erdmann and other German brewers as farmers abandon barley – the raw material for the national beverage – to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally-friendly biofuels.