Bush Administration Downplays Role of Biofuel in Food Crisis
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration yesterday disputed the International Monetary Fund’s claim that their push to increase biofuel production has been the biggest factor in rising food prices.
The disagreement involves blame for a growing problem with rapidly inflating prices for staple crops that have led to famine and riots in many parts of the world.
The IMF recently estimated that the shift of crops out of the food supply to produce biofuels accounts for almost half of the recent increases in the global food prices. That has led to calls from anti-poverty groups to rethink government policies to boost biofuel production at a time that the IMF estimates that global food prices rose by 43% in the 12 months ending in March.
But the Bush administration’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Edward Lazear, told a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that biofuel production has played a only a small part in food inflation.
America has mandated increased production of ethanol, mostly from corn, to reduce oil consumption and dependence on foreign energy sources.
