Who ya gonna believe? The ethanol lobby?

Corn demand for ethanol has no noticeable impact on retail food prices. A central theme in the “food versus fuel” myth is the false assertion that moderately higher corn prices, spurred by ethanol demand, are leading to higher retail food prices for consumers.

Or Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics?

Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making ethanol for motor fuel. So the stomachs of the hungry must also compete with fuel tanks.

Misdirected government policy plays a part here, too. In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. This law combined with a subsidy for this use has created a flourishing corn market in the United States, but has also diverted agricultural resources from food to fuel. This makes it even harder for the hungry stomachs to compete.

Ethanol use does little to prevent global warming and environmental deterioration, and clear-headed policy reforms could be urgently carried out, if American politics would permit it. Ethanol use could be curtailed, rather than being subsidized and enforced.