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The U.S.’s rush to grow corn for fuel has already been blamed for rising food costs that are pricing the world’s poor into hunger and malnutrition. But the high cost of corn is having another unintended consequence: a plunge in biofuel plants’ profit margins.
About one-fourth of all corn grown in the U.S. is now cultivated for fuel rather than for food. Meanwhile, the growing demand for both food and fuel is driving commodity prices for crops like corn to record highs. That means, even with the federal government’s generous subsidies for ethanol production, today’s biofuel profits aren’t what they used to be.
By Sam Aola Ooko •
April 23, 2008
In the midst of the global food crisis, biofuels have been named as a probable culprit in driving the cost of food high up out of the reach of the world’s poor. New laws have just come into force in the United Kingdom requiring that all petrol and diesel be at least 2.5 per cent biofuel.
That target is expected to increase to five per cent by 2010 as part of efforts to make transport fuels more environmentally friendly. United States has just surpassed Brazil as the world’s largest producer of ethanol fuel.
The increased demand for biofuels from the world’s richer nations is being partly blamed for the skyrocketing food prices. Farmland that was once used to grow crops to feed people is now growing fuel for cars.
Here are (some of) the world’s biggest biofuel plants, including those in the pipeline, by production:
