My view: Ethanol vilification has been misdirected

Charles Bensinger |

5/4/2008 - 5/4/08

Regarding your April 25 editorial "Food prices for the poor are creating a crisis":

Seems you've bought into the relentless "shock-and-awe" campaign launched against biofuels, which makes the dubious claim that biofuels are the primary cause of the world's food crisis. And just about every other world problem as well.

But in 2007, food prices increased about 4 percent, while oil prices jumped by nearly 100 percent.

The fact is, biofuels are the only presently viable substitute to petroleum fuels. And U.S. biofuel production is domestic and not controlled or owned by the oil industry. Does this tell us something about the forces behind the current biofuels vilification program? Could it be that a certain industry is trying to divert our attention away from far more egregious issues?

Consider this: In 2008, we will spend nearly one-half trillion dollars on imported oil and another one-half trillion dollars to support a military effort to protect our Middle Eastern sources of oil. One trillion dollars, if added to the price of petroleum at the pump would boost the per gallon cost of gasoline and diesel by about $2 per gallon. The price of E85 ethanol in Santa Fe is regularly 30 to 40 cents per gallon less than the price of unleaded gas.

You rail against U.S. grain and biofuel subsidies, money that is sent to the U.S. Midwest, not the Middle East. But what about the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies that the oil industry enjoys and continues to receive at taxpayer expense? Do they really need vast government tax breaks during a time of astronomical profits?

The reality is that higher costs of corn and soy products play a relatively minor role as a factor in overall food costs. The major drivers of the food crisis are, rampant, greed-based financial speculation, high oil prices, drought, increasing consumer demand, higher costs of labor and raw materials, millions more meat eaters, faulty NAFTA policies and a dangerously dysfunctional global food marketplace.

Santa Fean Charles Bensinger is the biofuels program director for Renewable Energy Partners.