Today in Biofuels Opinion: NY Times corrects, says poor countries, not G8 finance ministers, criticized Western biofuels policy

The New York Times corrected its major article on Western biofuel policy: “Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about the effect of biofuels on the price of food misidentified the representatives who criticized Western biofuel policy during a meeting in Washington last weekend on global economic issues. Much of the criticism came from representatives of poor countries that have been hit hard by rising food prices. It did not come from the finance ministers or central bankers of seven leading industrial countries.”

In Canada’s National Post: “Another misconception trotted out by the uninitiated is that huge amounts of irrigated water is diverted in the U.S. Midwest to grow the corn for ethanol. Facts are 90% of the corn feedstock is NOT irrigated and, even if more was, it makes no difference because the water is recycled naturally or returned by the ethanol plants.”

Brooke Coleman, executive director of the New Fuel Alliance, wrote: “Several studies have shown that record petroleum prices, which permeate the entire food system for all types of food, have three times the food price impact as biofuels…The food and fuel debate to date has been too simplistic, focusing on biofuels, rather than recognizing the significant impacts of fast rising petroleum prices, increasing Asian demand for protein and grains, and weather-related events like Australian and European droughts.”

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