World Bank: Biofuels Didn't Cause Grain Price Booms

The missing factor you are looking for in the price hike between 2000 and 2008 is President Bush funding his two wars and giving tax breaks to the rich. When President Clinton left office the U.S. had 1.3 trillion surplus and gas was $1.38 a gallon. When Bush left office the U.S. was 2.9 trillion in the red and gasoline was $4.15 a gallon. Get out your adding machine there brilliant scientist, crunch some numbers and you will find that missing link sitting in the Oval Office.

And by the way, while you are hunting for that missing link, remember this...only a fool would take food out of the mouths of the world and put it in their gas tank.

Not to even mention the perfect graphic correlation between the price of crude oil and the price of grain and everything else.

Fred I think your spot on. There are so many factors for farming dependent on oil its not funny.

I'm not sure what James is talking about with his Pedantic Diatribe about idealistic crap. Get a life and get real James.....

Because the production of biofuels is still very small) compared to fossil fuels), I can imagine its influence on food sources is not very big either, until now.
But this cannot be the argument to plea "biofuels are harmless" and increase its production 10 fold or 100 fold. If we did, it would certainly create food shortages. So biofuels (except from bio-wastes) cannot be a solution. Moreover it is a perverse way of puting our (rich countries') energy need above our (world population's) need for food. Biofuels (except from bio-wastes) should be globally banned, just like cluster bombs, land mines and the like.

You should read 'Alcohol Can Be A Gas', by David Blume, to see the research,and understand the benefits of alcohol as a fuel to replace gasoline in your tank. The benefits are many for the engine, and for the atmosphere. The internal combustion engine was originally designed to run on alcohol and ran better than with toxic gasoline. The world's food supply should not be affected by the making of alcohol since we should be using a type of beet, that can be grown on marginal land, and produces far more alcohol per acre than grain or most other crops. Blume does not suggest using grains, but rather waste fruit, contaminated crops, and bio waste of all sorts. His message is hard to hear in in the media, because it is drowned out by the Coal and Oil interests providing false and misleading information. In the early 1900's many farmers used a part of their crop to make alcohol to run their farm equipment, laws created by politicians who were influenced by the oil companies, put a stop to this logical practise, supposedly to promote temperance, but actually to promote oil profits. We have suffered ever since by actions of the oil companies acting in their own interest to the great detriment of the public, for example; the decimation of the efficient electric street railway systems in the large cities all over the United States and Canada. Miadam