Food vs fuel: biofuels blamed for Texas food price increases

The Houston Chronicle reports a 0.9% increase in Houston food prices in July which it attributes to the rising price of corn and the impact of biofuels. June food prices in Houston rose 0.4%. Biofuels defenders have pointed out that corn represents less than 5% of the component retail cost of, for example, breakfast cereal, whereas promotion, marketing and advertising represents 48% of product cost. Cereal manufacturers blamed rising raw material costs for raising prices by 2% and decreasing package weight by 5-13% in 2006.

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