[DGthe3]

Ethanol is not to blame for rising food costs. here are 3 things to consider.
1) China needs to eat, and they eat more than any nation on earth, and they cannot grow nearly enough to support themselves. And this demand has only occured recently. So as total producion in north america has stayed more or less level, demand has gone way up.
2) Why did people start using ethanol derived from corn as a fuel? Because the price of oil was going up. Modern industrial scale farming requires massive amounts of pesticides and fertilizer derived from oil. The increase in use of corn based ethanol was caused by the same things that caused an increase in food prices.
3) If corn and derived food products (corn chips, glucose, etc) were all going up independant of other foods you might have a serious argument. But any food that I have searched for has gone up: wheat, tomatoes, apples, potatoes, bananas, everything. None of those are used in the production of biofuel. So either there are 2 different sets of rules, or ethanol isn't to blame.