Maybe it's a good thing that American biofuel plants are filing for bankruptcy protection. According to a previously secret report conducted by the World Bank and obtained by the Guardian newspaper, biofuel production is hugely responsible for the food price crisis. How much? The report - the "most detailed analysis of the crisis so far," in the Guardian's words - says that biofuels caused global food prices to rise by 75 percent. This is much higher than previous estimates. Food Before Fuel estimated a 30 percent influence, and the Guardian says the U.S. government claims that biofuels were responsible for just a three percent rise.

The kicker? The report was finished in April but has been kept secret "to avoid embarrassing President George Bush," the Guardian writes. We wouldn't want that, now, would we?

Requiring ethanol and biodiesel in national fuel supplies helped push costs up, but sugarcane ethanol from Brazil did not play as big a role. All the more reason to bring out the second-gen biofuels as soon as feasible. Read more here.

[Source: Guardian]

Yesterday, I wrote about an article in the Economist that equated the amount of maize it takes to make a gallon of ethanol with a year's worth of food. Earlier today, we saw the latest bit of bad news from an ethanol producer (the suspension of construction of a large ethanol plant in Imperial Valley). Still, ethanol does have its defenders, and one of them - from Poet Energy - contacted AutoblogGreen to point us to a brand new study by Informa Economics that finds that overall food prices have a "weak correlation" with the price of corn. In other words, don't blame E85 for the increased cost of your dinner.

Actually, the study is long-term and looked at 20 years of data. The results are what's new. Reuters says that the study "shows that corn prices have minimal impact on the U.S. Consumer Price Index for food, which has been on the rise." Reuters reporter Christine Stebbins spoke with Bruce Scherr, Informa's chief executive, who said, "We're not saying that corn prices are cheap, that ethanol hasn't helped underpin the growth in the corn economy. What we are saying is to blame corn and corn-based ethanol for all of the inflation associated with food and food prices ... is to grossly under-consider all the other forces at work." In other words, don't blame E85 for all of the increased cost of your dinner.

Renewable Fuels Foundation funded the Informa study. You can read Informa's announcement or download the complete study (both in PDF).

[Source: Domestic Fuel, Reuters via Nathan S.]

This morning, the most intelligent host in talk radio, Diane Rehm, spent the first hour of her show discussing food prices in America, with a focus on ethanol's effect on the cost of just about anything edible in our society. Her guests were Bruce Babcock, professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University; Dan Morgan, special correspondent, Washington Post and fellow at the German Marshal Fund of the United States; and Lauren Etter, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

There's a lot of good stuff in the show, and if you've got the opportunity to stream it while you work or are in the kitchen or something, it's recommended. The takeaway points for me are that a.) anyone who argues that ethanol doesn't affect food prices is trying to pull a fast one and b.) we're digging ourselves into a wee bit of a hole by the way we're operating our large-scale agriculture/business/politics world. You can listen to the show here. What do you think?

[Source: NPR]