Guardian Publish the Biofuels Report They Didn't Want You to Read (Aditya Chakrabortty)

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Biofuels

The implication of the report is that crop-derived fuels have been the ultimate cause of food riots, starvation and high prices around the world

Seventeen pages of graphs, footnotes and economic modelling; oh, and another couple of pages of bibliography. Hardly the stuff to get the pulse racing, you might think.

But in the week since the Guardian exclusively revealed the contents of the World Bank's draft internal report on the link between biofuels and food prices, its findings have been reported in newspapers, blog and broadcast media from Durban to Delhi.

What's caused all the fuss? Well, the World Bank report argues that the drive for biofuels by American and European governments has pushed up food prices by 75%. That is in stark contrast with the White House's claims that using crops for fuel, rather than food, has only pushed prices up by 2-3%.

All the other factors discussed - rising demand for food from China and India, back-to-back droughts in Australia - are, the report says, marginal:

{xtypo_quote} Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate. {/xtypo_quote}