Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Food Crisis Worries?
What's wrong with this picture?
Did you notice the word "government"?...
Did you notice the word "government"?...
In the New York Sun, Josh Gerstein reports:
"One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.
'I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,' a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels."
