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Food for thought
'FEEDING THE car' has never been closer to the literal truth as the latest figures show that one-quarter of all grain crops grown in the US in 2009 ended up as biofuel for cars.
The amount of grain used to produce ethanol biofuel for cars in the US was the equivalent of feeding 330 million people for one year.
This trend in agricultural production is set to continue apace - a legacy of George Bush, who encouraged farmers back in 2007 to shift from food production to biofuels to reduce the US's dependency on foreign based oil supplies.
Consequently, world grain prices reached record highs in 2008 as both US and European farmers switched production. In fact, according to a leaked World Bank report, the switch to biofuels resulted in food prices rising by a massive 75%, despite deflationary pressures of the current economic recession.
In the same period the number of hungry people in the world increased to over one billion according to the UN.
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