Today in Biofuels Opinion: “A biofuels executive threatened that I might become “roadkill” if I did not change the subject”

Kenneth E. Feltman, Xenia Gazette: “The corn-ethanol lobby is well organized, aggressive and nasty. Last year, I wrote three articles saying that corn-ethanol production takes farmland out of food production, uses huge amounts of increasingly scarce water, and leaves poor people in countries such as Mexico hungry because their cost of food increases beyond their means as corn and other grains are diverted to fuel. After the second article, a biofuels executive threatened that I might become “roadkill” if I did not change the subject. Another corn-ethanol advocate accused me of siding with “an enemy of America” when I wrote that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez accused the U.S. of starving the poor to “feed automobiles.”

Iowa State University economist Bruce Babcock: “Corn is getting a bad rap.  People just think, ‘Well, if the price of corn has gone up $3 or $4 a bushel, that must mean it’s responsible for everything that’s happening with food prices. A colleague of mine, professor Hayes and his graduate student, did a study on [ethanol's role in reducing gas prices] and they came up with about 30 cents a gallon.”

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