Biofuels or Cheap Food: Do We Have to Choose?

It looks like we really can't have everything. Western nations may have been feeling environmentally optimistic lately because of their embrace of biofuels made from corn or sugarcane -- a clean-burning, renewable energy source. But as ethanol producers have snapped up corn reserves, food prices around the world have spiraled up, causing scattered riots from Mexico to Haiti to Somalia. At a hastily organized summit meeting of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, officials warned that the present unrest could develop into a "global catastrophe." The statistics tell a serious story: