Photo by Hummanna. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Food security is a big issue in global politics these days, and the UN is starting a three-day conference in Rome today to discuss it. Since some food crops are currently used to make fuel, representatives from the biofuel industry wanted to make their voice heard in Italy. To that end, Gordon Quaiattini of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, Rob Vierhout from the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, and Bob Dinneen of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) in the U.S. have sent a letter to the UN conference leaders explaining their views. You can download the letter (PDF) or read it by clicking here (that's page 1, then 2 and 3).

The letter warns the UN and anyone else against singling about biofuels as a "major cause" of the recent upswing in food prices, calling such an attitude "highly precipitous." In a sign of just how quickly things move, the letter faults the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for using oil price estimates contained in a December 2007 Organization of Economic Co­operation and Development (OECD) report. The letter says that those prices are outdated, since, "Oil prices have increased some 40% since December. Moreover, many recent long­range projections show future oil prices at much higher levels (one has oil prices rising to $150 per barrel by the end of this year)." That's where a lot of the rise in food prices lie, the letter says, not in biofuel crops. Read more from the RFA after the jump.