What's this, a story about rising food prices, and no mention about global warming? Go figure. As Suzanne Goldenberg reports in the Guardian:
Demand for biofuels in the US is driving this year's high food prices, a report has said. It predicts that food prices are unlikely to fall back down for another two years. The report, produced by Purdue University economists for the Farm Foundation policy organisation, said US government support for ethanol, including subsidies, had fuelled strong demand for corn over the last five years. A dramatic rise in Chinese imports of soybeans was also putting pressure on prices and supply, the report said. Since 2005, a growing number of US farmers have switched to corn and soybeans from other crops. Farmers in other countries have also switched to corn but, the report said, the demand kept growing.
Climate bloggers prone to attaching a global warming angle to headline stories (think Arab uprisings and Western wildfires, for example) probably won't be playing up the biofuels/rising food prices linkage discussed in Goldenberg's piece.
