Max Gladwell

Compelling evidence that biofuels are not playing a significant part in rising food prices.

New Energy Finance will release a study next week that finds biofuels play a “far from dominant” role in food price increases around the world. The Wall Street Journal, CNET, and EcoGeek are all covering this story. We wrote recently about the Temporary Reprieve for Ethanol. And as far back as September of last year, we blogged about this topic on our MySpace page. 

It’s easy to make the jump from corn ethanol to rising food prices. This is made even easier when those who feel threatened by biofuels, namely Big Oil, fan the flames of this irrational controversy. But it’s never had any serious merit.

Granted, corn ethanol is far from perfect. But when you look at the big picture and take into account all environmental, geopolitical, national security, and economic factors with a long-term view i.e. the bridge to second-generation biofuels and related alternatives, corn ethanol is a net positive. There are many policies that could increase this net, such as importing sugar-based ethanol from Brazil without a tariff and diverting some of those farm subsidies to research and development. These should be the areas where we invest our efforts and energies. Let’s put the food-price debate to rest. At least for now. 

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