US NEWS
Biofuels Adding to Food Shortages
2008-04-25 01:23pm
Experts say the trend towards replacing fossil fuel with biofuels such as ethanol has gone a long way toward contributing to a worldwide food crisis.
In the U.S. some 30 percent of the nation's corn crop goes towards the production of ethanol, which has left a substantial gap in the production, use and export of corn for food, the New York Sun reported Friday.
"I don't think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial," C. Ford Runge, a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, told the paper.
A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, concluded that between one quarter and one-third of the recent hike in food prices is attributable to biofuels.
Runge and a colleague last year wrote a scholarly article detailing how biofuel production could lead to food shortages.
"We were criticized for being alarmist at the time," he told the Sun. "I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative."
(c) 2008 Newsroom.