US Official: Biofuels 'Scapegoat' for High Food Prices
时间：2011-06-16 06:14:41
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With food prices at or near record highs, agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 major economies will be meeting for the first time next week in Paris. Critics say one factor putting pressure on food prices is the use of food crops to produce biofuels like ethanol. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Monday said the American ethanol industry plays only a minor1 role in rising food prices. But he added government support for the industry may be waning2.
Secretary Vilsack told a
luncheon(午餐) gathering3 in Washington not to believe everything one hears about ethanol's role in today's high and
volatile4 food prices. "The truth of the matter is that corn-based ethanol does not deserve the
scapegoat5 reputation that some folks often attempt to assign to it," he said.
Critics, however, point to the fact that 40 percent of the U.S. corn - or
maize6 - crop is now used to produce the biofuel. The industry grew rapidly in the last decade, and many
analysts8 say that is part of the reason why maize supplies are tighter than they have been in 15 years. And those extremely tight supplies push prices up and make them very sensitive to any bumps in the market like bad weather.
Policy
analyst7 Marie Brill at the advocacy group ActionAid wonders whether too much is being asked of farmers. "Are we setting our farmers up to fail by asking them to feed the world and our cars in a changing climate?" Brill asked.
Vilsack says no. He conceded that biofuels played a role the last time food prices rose sharply in 2007 and 2008, but he said it was minor -- only 10 percent of the increase.
And, he added, Americans have been benefiting from the biofuel industry's growth in a number of ways. It is providing jobs and economic opportunities in rural America, where rates of
chronic9 poverty and unemployment are highest. Vilsack said blending ethanol into gasoline has lowered the cost at the pump by about 25 cents a liter. And he said biofuels hold even more promise for the future.
"If we're to meet the president's challenge of reducing our reliance on foreign oil by a third, we're going to need to have a
robust10 biofuel industry,” Vilsack said. “Now, to do that, we're going to have to move away from corn-based ethanol, which we recognize and which we are doing."Vilsack
pointed11 to government-backed research on biofuels from
algae12, grasses, and other crops. But critics say none of those crops are
viable13 alternatives to food-based biofuels yet.
In addition to the competition between food and fuel, many critics object to the fact that the ethanol industry gets about $ 6 billion in government
subsidies14 at a time when business is booming and budgets are tight.
ActionAid's Marie Brill says even the industry itself recognizes it can stand on its own. "There's been this growing
consensus15 even within the ethanol industry that the
subsidy16 and the
tariff17 at this point could be removed without having a big impact on the production and use of biofuels," Brill stated.
Tom Vilsack does not disagree. He wants to see the industry grow. "Does that mean continuing subsidies forever? No. But I think we have to be very careful about the way in which we go about reducing those subsidies," he said.
Vilsack wants to see funds redirected to producing gas pumps and cars that are better able to handle ethanol.
But critics say the government should not continue to support food-based biofuels until viable alternatives are developed.（本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑）
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