World has been growing biofuels for cars while the poor people across the globe have begun to starve as food prices soared beyond their reach. Rising inflation and the gloomy world economic scenario have contributed to this grim scenario. Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the past three years, according to the World Bank—putting huge stress on some of the world’s poorest nations.

Rising Prices

Rioting in response to soaring food prices took place Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops had to be deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses. Haiti’s Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in which that tiny country’s capital was racked by rioting over higher prices for staples such as rice and beans.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned in a  speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person’s income, “there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Politics

Many policymakers at the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other targets, they singled out US policies pushing corn-based ethanol and other biofuels as deepening the woes.

“When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said India’s finance minister, P Chidambaram, in an interview. Turkey’s finance minister, M Simsek, said the use of food for biofuels is “appalling”.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House’s council on environmental quality, said biofuels are only one contributor to rising food prices. Rising prices for energy and electricity also contribute, as does strong demand for food from big developing countries such as China.

The situation in Haiti underscored some of the problems afflicting the world’s poorest countries. Haiti has enough food in the marketplace to feed its populace, but prices have increased beyond the means of many of the urban poor to pay for it.

Banning exports

In the Philippines, the world’s biggest importer of rice, a shortage of the grain has become acute. The government is considering a moratorium on converting agricultural land to construction of housing developments and golf courses. It also is urging fast-food restaurants to offer half-portions of rice to slash the country’s rice bill.

Aggravating the problem, in some countries food inflation has prompted a wave of protectionism. Countries usually impose trade barriers to imports to protect local industries and try to boost exports. But food-trade protectionism works the opposite way. Recently at least a dozen of 58 countries surveyed by the World Bank have reduced tariffs to food imports and erected barriers to exports in hopes of restraining food prices domestically and moving toward “self-sufficiency”.

India, home to more than half the world’s hungry, is restricting grain exports, including a ban on the export of non-basmati rice. Taxes on edible oils, corn and butter have been decreased or eliminated.

Egypt similarly halted rice exports for six months as of 1 April. The price of cereals and bread there has climbed by nearly 50% over the past 12 months. The shortage compelled President Hosni Mubarak to order the army to bake additional loaves.

Bio fuels

During informal conversations and interviews, ministers mainly agreed that the US policies on biofuels were especially harmful. US ethanol is made from corn, which, ministers said, could be exported to feed the hungry, and benefited from tariffs that block Brazilian ethanol, which is produced much more efficiently from sugar cane.

The White House’s Connau-ghton said the US is working on developing “second generation” biofuels