Rising food prices and their unintended consequences

Some more sad news about food and farming. From the Washington Post (use BugMeNot for registration):

Soaring Food Prices Putting U.S. Emergency Aid in Peril
Supplies and Recipients Likely to Be Reduced

The U.S. government's humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world's poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.

USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year's end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.

Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency's emergency programs -- which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan's Darfur region -- to decide how and where the cuts will be made.

We need to stop biofuel subsidies and production yesterday. This only benefits big agribusiness (thanks Archer Daniels Midland) with 52 cents per gallon subsidy (out of our tax dollars) and it only raises our food prices as more land gets planted in corn and the other crops become scarce. And don't get me started about palm-oil production in the rainforests (oops - make that EX-Rainforests)... Nuclear for baseload generation, use the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert our vast coal resources into gasoline and diesel. Use any of the alt.energy sources (geothermal, wind, solar) for peak or intermittent loads. There is no other way that makes any economic sense...