Here are some comments from Cargill’s retired CEO, Warren Staley - keep in mind these are comments from the CEO who helped build Cargill as an ethanol producer, made to the industry magazine Biofuels Business

This past year we have seen the rapid expansion in US biofeuls production capacity drive up food prices, with significant adverse consequences for the poor globally.

If the world is to avoid making hard chioces on how to allocate land and grain/oilseeds across food, feed and fuel uses, we need to let agricultural productivity catch up to this new demand pressure.

What I see as their political challenge is not so much “putting on the brakes” as easing up on the accelerator ofr supplies to catch up with the artificial demand policy has created.

The pace of expansion in biofuels needs to moderate in order for markets to find the approriate balance amond these uses.

None of us in this industry want to force choices between food for the hungry, feed for growing livestock industries, and fuels for cars and trucks. Right now, the policies underpinning the biofuels industry in most countries are not addressing this issue, but they are interfering with the global market’s ability to bring these harmoniously in line.

… ethanol is moving from a demand enhancer (increasing corn usage) to a demand diverter (taking crop land away from other uses and diverting corn from export and feed channels into the fuel channel).