The Massive Food and Land Costs of U.S. Corn Ethanol - An Update

Competitive Enterprise Institute
October 29, 2008 No. 144
By Dennis T. Avery*

My 2006 CEI Issue Analysis, “Biofuels, Food, or Wildlife? The Massive Land Costs of
U.S. Ethanol,” concluded that the United States did not have enough cropland to make a
significant dent in its transport fuel demand without risking radically higher food prices,
while suffering a massive loss of forests and grasslands to expanded corn production.

Yet even I have been astounded at the swift onset of food shortages and high crop prices
which have ensued since. According to the World Bank, global food prices have
increased by an average of 83 percent over the 36 months to April 2008, during which
time the United States diverted ever increasing amounts of corn into ethanol.1 At the
same time, European nations were increasingly diverting rapeseed and imported palm oil
into biodiesel, and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan was building plants to
ferment more than 1.4 million tons of wheat per year into wheat ethanol.2

Read the report