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How the World's Richest Governments Starve the World's Poorest People
...Thus, almost all additional US corn production between 2004 and 2007, for instance, has been diverted to the production of ethanol, while the European ethanol production more than tripled during the same period. The increased use of grains for ethanol production has led to a fall in the supply of grains relative to overall demand during the last seven years (with the exception of 2006, which was compensated by the use of grain stocks, now at the lowest level globally in a quarter century). This situation is not, however, a natural market phenomenon, but the direct result of various government programs — usually in the world's most developed economies, although developing countries are catching up — that aim to promote more environmentally friendly energy technology or energy self-sufficiency by subsidizing and mandating the diversion of a growing percentage of agricultural commodities such as corn, sugar cane, wheat, and so on, to the production of bioethanol and biodiesel....