Fact: Without an alternative fuel source such as ethanol, the price of gasoline would spike at least another 14.6 percent. As an example: If gasoline is $4 a gallon at the pump with the current availability of ethanol, it would jump to $4.58 a gallon without the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel.
 Source: Merrill Lynch

Fact: The addition of ethanol to U.S. gasoline supplies helps keep gasoline prices down, and also helps keep the price of crude oil lower than it otherwise would be by reducing overall demand. This prevents the cost of food from increasing even more.
 Source: Renewable Fuels Association

In recent weeks, a flood of reports and statements has claimed that the world’s biofuel programs—in particular the U.S. corn ethanol effort—is starving poor people around the globe. Even the UN’s special rapporteur for the Right to Food decried biofuel production as “a crime against humanity.”

Record energy costs and rising food prices are taking a painful toll on consumers’ pocketbooks. Fuel and food are basic necessities, and there is a limit to how much Americans can tighten up their family budgets. As Congress considers how to turn the U.S. economy around, some suggest the choice we must make is to surrender our commitment to renewable fuels such as ethanol.

That would be a mistake, costing Americans dearly by squandering our long-term economic and national security, while doing little to affect the food supply or prices.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer yesterday said U.N. and other international aid officials are “flat-out wrong” to call U.S. ethanol production from corn a major factor in world food shortages and riots.

May 10th, 2008 - “The Washington Times”

If truth is the first casualty of war, it appears the “food fight” being waged by anti-ethanol interests has nearly achieved its first casualty. The false idea that ethanol production is causing high food prices, and even food shortages around the world, has been so frequently asserted that Americans have begun to blindly accept the premise. However, when the facts are examined it is clear the accusations are untrue. Let’s examine several of the myths about ethanol: