I think that's a bit much, Mark.

Just a couple of thoughts to throw out there.
In developed countries the cost of the ingredients is a small portion of the cost of the food. So will this hurt the poor in rich countries?
Poor countries have been hurt for decades by massive export subsidies by the Europeans and Americans. So higher commodity prices should actually help the agricultural sectors in those countries.
I'm not saying higher food prices won't leave anyone starving, but I have to wonder if higher prices are all bad news.

Just a thought when you make ethonal the left over feedstock is a high protein feed. For cows, pigs whatever. so why is it making meat more expenceive and not less ?

great comedy guys, yes the poor people in other countries are paying 40% more for food so we can have our false outrage fix. Farmers make more, consumers outnumber them 100 to one.

^ Except "our own" in cities who take the bus and are struggling to put food on the table already. Somehow people don't get teary eyed for those people. Instead, they call 'em welfare queens. Farmers on the other hand -- they're real 'Muricans.

Whatever.

The above post it not mine...Mike will be notified and I will go after your ISP if he will not.

My grass clippings and tree bark reference was to a humorous remark by another poster on a different story earlier this week.

But back to this story, anyone who feels that setting aside farmland to grow fuel for our vehicles, instead of food for our bodies, and think it will not adversely affect our food supplies or prices, is in for a shock. This story backs me up on that. Here is another example:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/17/news/economy/bc.food.ethanol.prices.reut/index.htm

and another:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070531/wl_csm/oporky

and another:

http://environmental-economics.blogspot.com/2007/03/food-to-fuel-increases-world-food.html

Its true that the leftover "waste" from ethanol is a food for cattle. But you would never want to feed your cattle this ration exclusively. Also cattle do not live exclusively in a feed lot. They are raised on some pasture somewhere, perhaps fed some sort of alfalfa or sorgum or supplemental corn silage while being pastured perhaps on a coastal burmuda pasture. This ethanol debate supply could eliminate some of those alfalfa, sorgum, corn silage fields, or these coastal pastures, adversely affecting the cost of these cattle long before they are shipped to a feedlot.

Also lets not even think about what a Katrina style weather event, or a major drought, would do to our nations farms, in delivering our food stocks.

Lets get our heads out of the sand and realize whats going on around us.

Ok ...

So has the increase in ethanol production in Brazil raised their food prices? Why should conversion of an export product from one form to another affect one country more than another? Have there been generally positive or negative effects in Brazil due to changes in their national renewable resource outputs (ie. Suger from suger cane vs ethanol from suger cane).

The honest answer is that its too early to REALLY know what certain changes in our economy will do to the food supply. Maybe we will start farming land which was previously laying fallow or not farmed at all! Remember that corn isn't the only feed stock you can use either. We're still on the cusp/watershed of these events.

The difference between the US and Brazil is that there is still so much undeveloped land here in Brazil (and I am not talking about the Amazon) that the effect of growing all that sugar cane for ethanol hasn't been felt in the prices of other commodities. On the bio-diesel side, the government in Brazil is promoting crops that can be grown on marginal land that would normally be unsuitable for food crops (i.e. castor bean, jatropha). Using corn for ethanol and soybean oil for bio-diesel is a ridicules waste of resources and is unsustainable but it does get the politicians elected.