Bureau Recommends: Subsidy cuts and famine spell change for US bio-fuel industry
The Bureau recommends an investigation by the Guardian into the problems facing the United States’ once lauded bio-fuel industry.
A $1.3tn budget deficit has forced Congress to re-examine three decades of government subsidies for corn ethanol.
Drought and famine in the Horn of Africa have also exposed further the problems created by large-scale bio fuel production.
By competing with food crops for land, large-scale bio-fuel production has constricted supply and boosted food prices around the world.
This has caused a backlash from environmentalists against bio-fuels such as corn ethanol.
The industry, which has experienced a five-year boom, has over 37m hectares in the US farming heartlands.
Fuel sold at most US petrol stations contains 10% of the bio-fuel ethanol and the industry had hoped to re-direct some of the funds to re-fitting more petrol stations following a deal in the Senate last July.
However environmental experts are hoping that the turn against the growth of the bio-fuel market will spell an end to the industry’s growth.
Bill Freese of the Centre for Food Safety said: ‘The research is very clear by now, turning corn into ethanol is not environmentally sound – it’s really an environmental disaster.’
