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April 21, 2008

Federal Order Is Driving Up Food Prices, Causing Pollution

MARSHALL REFUTES KAINE’S REASONS FOR NOT SEEKING BIOFUELS WAIVER

Del. Bob Marshall (R., Manassas) is taking sharp issue with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine over Kaine’s refusal to seek a temporary waiver of a federal order causing diversion of corn from food and livestock feed to biofuels production.

Marshall, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, asserts that the biofuels order is harming Virginia families and watermen by causing higher grocery prices and increasing pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.  Marshall contends that Kaine’s refusal to seek a waiver is based on incorrect information and faulty assumptions.

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Friday that the growing emphasis on corn-based ethanol has contributed to higher food prices, and the nation should begin "moving away gradually" from ethanol made from food such as corn.

Bodman's remarks were presented at an Alexandria, Va., conference, The Journal reported as “efforts to make motor-vehicle fuels from grains such as corn are coming under fire amid soaring world food prices and food riots in several countries.”  On Tuesday (April 15), a United Nations report called biofuels a "crime against humanity,” the newspaper reported.

In an April 9 letter to the governor, Marshall urged Kaine to ask for the waiver from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is permitted under federal law because of what he termed “the inflationary federal biofuels mandate.”

“I agree that lifting the ethanol mandate will not eliminate all of the causes of higher food prices,” Marshall wrote,  “but please explain to me and other Virginians why you will not take the steps you can to afford some relief to Virginia consumers, farmers and watermen clearly harmed by the biofuels mandate.” 

The mandate requires that Virginia substitute 9 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels this year for other types of fuel, which Marshall says “has created a food-versus-fuel conflict in our economy.”

In an April 15 response, Kaine said that, rather than a temporary waiver of the mandate, Virginians should rely on more efficient future use of energy.  Kaine cited a number of reasons for the situation other than the biofuels mandate, one of them a poor corn crop last year because of bad weather conditions.

“The reasons you cited to me for not acting on my April 9 request ... are based on incorrect  assumptions,” Marshall rejoined in a letter sent by telefacsimile to Kaine on Sunday (April 20).

Marshall’s latest letter cites a March report of the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI), tracking high food prices, that “it has become profitable to divert maize [corn] and other feed and foodcrops to biofuel production, and new biofuel subsidies offer further encouragement. … One-third of the [U.S.] harvest went to ethanol production as a market reaction to the new subsidies.  The profitability of biofuels, in turn, leads to higher prices in other commodities by causing farmers to switch from growing foodcrops to growing biofuel feedstocks.”

An April IFPRI report Marshall’s letter cites, indicates that, because of high oil prices and federal crop-to-energy subsidies, “U.S. farmers have massively shifted their cultivation toward biofuel feedstocks, especially maize, often at the expense of soybean and wheat cultivation. …”

Marshall’s latest letter also cites official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics showing “that the United States had a historic high for corn production in 2007, 25 per cent higher than 2006, and a full 2 billion bushels more than any previous record year.

The USDA statistics indicate that U.S. corn production in 2007 was13.1 billion bushels, well above the 10.5 billion bushels in 2006 and the 10.1 billion bushels three years earlier.

Energy Secretary Bodman, in Friday’s remarks as reported by The Wall Street Journal, said: "As we pursue diversity in our overall energy mix, we must also pursue diversity in our biofuels.  This means moving away gradually from ethanol produced from foodstocks like corn."

In December, The Journal reported, President Bush signed an energy bill mandating that 36 billion gallons of so-called renewable fuel be blended into the fuel supply by 2022, with 21 billion gallons coming from sources other than corn, such as cellulosic ethanol from wood chips..

"The reason that cellulosic fuels like ethanol are not on the market in large volumes is not because we don't know how to make it in commercial quantities," Mr. Bodman said. "The production process at present is too complex and too costly, but I am confident that we can find the way forward."

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NEWS CONTACT:  Bill Kling, 804-580-4050 (telephone), 804-761-4430 (cellphone), kling@usa.net

Marshall for Senate, Inc., Post Office Box 458, Manassas, Virginia 20108

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