World Bank links biofuels, growing food crisis

States across the South are working to promote the use of plant-based fuel as an alternative to imported petroleum, but the biofuels movement is not without its down side.

In Texas, for example, Gov. Rick Perry recently petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a one-year reprieve from the federal ethanol mandate, which requires 36 billion gallons of plant-based fuels to be used annually by 2022. His reason? The soaring price of corn used to make ethanol is hurting the state's ranchers, who are having an increasingly hard time affording livestock feed.

But it's not just cattle at risk of going hungry.

A report done by the World Bank and recently obtained by U.K. newspaper The Guardian found that biofuels have pushed up global food prices by a whopping 75 percent. That contradicts the Bush administration's claim that biofuels contribute less than 3 percent to rising food costs. Unnamed development experts interviewed by the paper said they believe the report, which was completed in April and has not been released publicly, is being withheld to avoid embarrassing President Bush.

The report challenges Bush's claim that higher food prices can be blamed on rising demand in India and China, noting that income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption. It also identifies three primary ways that the biofuels push has impacted food markets: by diverting grain away from food (over a third of U.S. corn is now used to make ethanol, for example), encouraging farmers to set land aside for biofuel crops, and sparking financial speculation in grains.

The World Bank estimates that rising food prices have pushed 100 million people worldwide into poverty, and they have sparked riots from Haiti to Bangladesh. Closer to home, chaos erupted last month at Milwaukee government offices that were offering food stamps to people affected by the recent Midwest floods.