The cause a double whammy. It hardly dent the price of gas as far as cost goes and it raises the price of food. That's why the US Gov needs to end it's food for oil campaign with ethanol and let the poor people of the world eat again.

I agree that there's no reason to use food products to make ethanol. You can get ethanol from other organics without starving the poorer people out there. Plus your return per acre of land used can be much greater than something like corn. Algae as an example stacked and hung in long bags (forgot the name of man who is doing this) has about a 30x greater return than just a field of corn.

PS - Let's no forgot the sun either...

For those craving knowledge about the algae, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel.

Total agreement here, it has been proven, all those cornfields that the govt forced farmers to grow, fell flat on their faces. And yes it did hike up food costs, a better example is the Amazon Forest.

They cut down the forest equivalent to the size of Rhode Island for this bio fuel thing, and look, it's doing absolutely nothing, the waste of trees for nothing.

This corn oil thing was an interesting idea, which proved not feasible in the long run. Please let the farmers close those stupid corn fields and put back other farmed goods.

ethanol isn't the short term or long term answer to high oil prices. The energy output of ethanol is only slightly higher than the energy input to produce it. Even the argument that it's better to produce the ethanol here in America and not buy foreign oil doesn't work. Obviously, the long term best alternative will be hydrogen power or highly improved battery power. As for short term, I can only see hybrids and good old fashioned conservation doing any good.

c'mon, you think I'm going to click ads on a page that can't right there grammer good?

food-fuel is a waste
food is my fuel

turn waste into car fuel not food

or use algae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

slashing and burning rain forest to grow corn for fuel is insanity.

we shouldn't starve people just so we can drive.

Darn tootin. Biofuels are fine .. BUT only as long as they're not sacrificing another need. Especially something so critical as food. How can that not be obvious? Food wins against fuel, sorry.
So yes ... use other sources, like algae & waste products. Govt can be pretty stupid sometimes.

From 3% to 75% is a pretty damn big range. How are we supposed to know which report to believe? (Separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were...har har.) In any event, I don't think anyone believes that corn-based ethanol is the way to go long-term, but even in the short term, I think every little bit helps.

There is countless reasons not support biofuels but the US government and all it's wisdom seems to disagree.

It's sad that politics is treated like a game and we are spoon feed what we want to hear without action only in order for politicans to recieve our votes.

So you can grip about bio fuels all you want, nothing isn't going to happen. If complainig really helped then we wouldn't be in a fuel crisis in the first place.

75% of the increase in food costs is due to bio-fuels? If ethanol is made from corn in the U.S. one has to wonder.... How many corn dogs do you eat? Corn on the cob or from the can a part of every meal you guys eat? Do you find yourself shaking a lot when you don't get your fix of corn chips? I have a feeling that more then 75% of the corn grown in North America goes into animal feed or the pop you drink. If Coke and Pepsi didn't use up all that corn syrup in the boat loads of pop everyone drinks, we wouldn't have too much to worry about. Take a look at your fat stomachs and then look in the fridge. It is your pop requirements that is using up too much corn. Not the less then .5% of the gas pumps out there that have biofuels in them.

It's the ease of growing low quality high paying crops for fuel over crops for food.

Look how much farmers in South America are switching to fuel crops in the Amazon area because of $$$ even though so many people need food.

this report done by Big name oil companies... LMAO STFU already and give us hydrogen! greedy ass bastards

Ok, so we have a good darn idea why some many food products are going through the roof in regards to $$$.

But, what I'm not getting is OIL, if the "problem" in the Persic is being handled and there seems to be NO threats to OIL refineries or pipelines; then why the hell is the oil going up so HIGH...???

Could somebody please try to comment on this, or try to help me get this???

@Morgan

I wish that the damn High fructose corn syrup was only in our pop =( I refuse do take in that sh!t and it is really hard to find anything that doesn't use it anymore because it was so cheep for so long. The other issue is that it feeds all our cattle (again a grass fed steak is hard to find, corn fed taste nasty and usually sick; yay antibiotics). The US has been built on convenience and cheep commodities and now the bubble has burst damaging the worlds economy; oil should be for plastics and developing countries, all others should be on non fossil fuels. Please note I am not an environment nut; I love food (corn is just crap for your body) and I'm all for nukes along with the "green" energy.

Yes Morgan... A lot of it IS in fact used for feed. If it costs more for famers to feed their livestock what do you think is happening? Its raisng the cost of those products as well, whether it be dairy products like milk, yogurt, cheese, eggs, or meat like beef or chicken... Did you think before you wrote that? Take a basic economics class by the way, Biofuels are INCREASING DEMAND for corn. Do you know what happens to prices when demand increases?

Yes I thought about what I wrote. A person that responded to my post brought up a lot more that was one my mind but I didn't mention. Corn being used as feed and as corn syrup, in all sorts of products.....because it is cheap and plentiful. The U.S. seems to think it is owed the right to have $3.99 all you can eat dinners in Vegas or buffets every night while paying next to nothing. Everyone I have spoken to in the U.S. says the portion sizes you get when you eat out is obscene and that it is cheaper to eat out rather then buy your own groceries and make your own food. Doesn't that just sound sick to the rest of the world!??!?! I can't buy food to cook at home, so I eat out. And it is all crap food. But I get 3500 calories for 5 bucks at the iHop!!! No wonder everyone is obese. Don't even get me on the subject of how the U.S. and Canadian governments spend tax money to SUBSIDISE sooooooooo many of the crops. NO ONE IS WILLING TO PAY FAIR PRICE FOR WHAT THEY WANT. You ppl just want to keep on eating like pigs, eating crap and not pay more then $3 to do so. Wake up. The world can't sustain you at that pace forever. Face it. The oil is going to be gone and we can see that. Check how much there is being found and check world birth rates. Even simple math can tell you things are ugly in that regard. Time to stop saying " I DESERVE " like a spoiled brat and start making some changes. Sucks don't it.

I seriously think you have no idea what you are talking about. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PEOPLE EATING AT BUFFETS....Really, truly, why are you even reading this website there is NO way you can understand anything you're reading.

Did anyone actually read this article with the BS-O-meter turned on?

"biofuels have caused the cost of food to rise by about 75%"

OK, ...so any backing for this statement? I mean here Ms. Rose is telling us that the 3% number is a lie, and it may well be, but simply saying so doesn't do it. To make this point can we find any:

proof?
a logical argument?
...how about some real facts?

...lets look:

"We have yet to get our hands on the document, but..." AH! STOP! No "buts" you hack, get your facts first before you report. Hey everyone!!! I have proof that Bigfoot and the Lochness monster are shagging Paris Hilton, although I have yet to get my hands on the actual photos, but they are REAL!

Sure.

"New Energy Finance recently stated that biofuels are “far from the dominant” reason for the rising cost of food"

OK, so someone is refuting the claim...care to let us in on what those factors are? If I peruse their website I can start to find a few things...but I'm keeping them a SECRET - SHHHH.

"The article mentions that other studies that have been conducted do not take into account all of these factors and therefore may have come up with lower percentage numbers."

Umm, OK so it's equally possible that this study took the factors into account incorrectly and gave out a WHOPPING BIG number. Sorry. Nothing conclusive here.

...that brings us back to:

"biofuels have caused the cost of food to rise by about 75%"

If that's true then where's the throngs of people starving to death where they were fine before? Where are all the farmers switching to biofuel, surely we can cite a few statistics about them? Why not report to us about THEM?

This article is gutless because it does not say who is affected, how they are affected, and why the reader should be concerned, it merely trots out a meaningless statistic:

"biofuels have caused the cost of food to rise by about 75%"

I think we can file this claim along with winners like 99% of online statistics are made up, 85% of articles written today are actually proaganda, 75% of all media is clinically evil... to summarize the authors point: "hippies -vs- big oil".

uh huh, whatever. Small Austrian Corporals used the same technique to sway the masses about 60 years ago. Beware.

They should take all those farms/farmers that are paid not to grow anything and have them grow corn or other products. This should offset the cost of the grains used in ethanol and they government would be paying people to actually grow things.

Have the government pay more farmers to grow corn?!?!? Are you crazy? You do realize that subsidies are a HUGE part of the problem right? The government needs to get out of it... they have the reverse Midas touch... everything they touch turns to crap....

Corporate bailouts/breaks is wack. (Protects non-producers.)
Subsidies are wack. (Protects non-producers)
Unions are wack. (Protects non-producers)
Capital gains cuts are wack. (Effectively reduces income tax.)
Social Security tax is wack. (Why is it that if I get rich enough, the percentage of my total income that I pay for social security actually decreases? Do most people know about this feature?)
Why do corporations have more rights than people?
Why are we penalized for saving? (Excepting the capped roth ira, you're taxed for earnings you make on post-tax money... kinda wack)
Corn for fuel is inefficient, and there are other options. (Wack)

Wack, wack, wack.