Some headlines are so telling, that you don’t really need to write the story to go with them. So I’ll keep this story short and focus primarily on the facts that were revealed by the Earth Policy Institute last month. The think tank reports that in 2009, US ethanol distilleries consumed 107 million tons of grain.

That amounts to more than 25% of total US grain production. That quantity of grain, says Earth Policy, “was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels.” I’ll continue quoting from the report, because their findings are both stunning and depressing. The US, says the think tank:

is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire US grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of US automotive fuel needs.

When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest. The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels.

The authors of the report go on to point out that the amount of grain needed to produce enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV one time could “feed one person for an entire year.” And their report includes a trio of remarkable graphics which show the rise in US grain diverted to corn ethanol as well as the number of number of undernourished people in the world. Of course, correlation does not prove causation. But look at these three graphics and note how closely the rise in US corn ethanol use tracks the rise in hunger. Is it a coincidence? Maybe it is.

US Grain Used for Ethanol

Source: Earth Policy Institute

Number of Undernourished People in the World

Source: Earth Policy Institute

Number of People who could be Fed by the US Grain Used to Produce Ethanol

Source: Earth Policy Institute

That said, note that since 2004, the amount of grain the US has diverted to the ethanol sector has tripled. And during that same time period, the number of people globally who are undernourished has increased by about 150 million.

These facts about the destructiveness of corn ethanol are particularly timely given last week’s moves by the EPA to codify the Renewable Fuel Standard. As I wrote last week, the agency admitted that increasing the use of ethanol in the US gasoline supply will “lead up to 245 cases of adult premature mortality.”

While the mortality rates in the US are worth noting, the report from the Earth Policy Institute underscores the immorality of the entire corn ethanol scam. I seldom talk about morals and immorality as those issues are fraught with value judgments. But the immorality of the ethanol scam is obvious: the US is burning food to make motor fuel. And it is doing so at a time when there is growing global demand for inexpensive food and no shortage of motor fuel.

The Earth Policy Institute concludes their report by saying that the continuation of the ethanol mandates “will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, US taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world.”

There are lots of stupid federal programs. There are lots of wasteful federal programs. The corn ethanol mandates are immoral.

Original text here: http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=3162