Burning food: why oil is the real villain in the food crisis
Food is now worth more as petrol than on the table, says Chris Goodall, and the unpalatable truth is that only a long and painful attack on oil consumption will reverse the spiral in food prices.
The rising cost of foods is widely being blamed on the use of grains for biofuels, and the case for the prosecution is simply made. About 100m tonnes of maize from this year’s US crop will be diverted into ethanol refineries, an increase of a third on 2007’s figure. This means one in 20 of all cereal grains produced in the world this year will end up in the petrol tank of US cars, the country that is most aggressively increasing the use of food for fuel.