UPDATE 3-Biofuels major driver of food price rise-World Bank | Markets | Reuters - The Diigo Meta page

• 01 Aug 08
  

  Arabica Robusta

  biofuels food security crisis

  • World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent.
  • "The large increases in biofuels production in the U.S. and EU were supported by subsidies, mandates and tariffs on imports," Mitchell said in the research, which looks at rapid rises in food prices since 2002. "Without these policies, biofuels production would have been lower and food commodity price increases would have been smaller."

  • Bob Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the report showed a bias by the author against biofuels and underestimates the impact of higher energy prices and a weak dollar on higher food costs.

        

    "Such a simplistic approach fails to accurately and honestly account for the myriad of factors driving food costs higher," Dineen said. "I encourage the author and the World Bank to revisit the issue without bias, taking into account the increasingly significant role biofuels are playing in reducing global oil demand."

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