http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/05ethanol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Rise in Ethanol Raises Concerns About Corn as a Food

Renewing concerns about whether there will be enough corn to support the demand for both fuel and food, a new study has found that ethanol plants could use as much as half of America’s corn crop next year.

Dozens of new ethanol plants are being built by farmers and investors in a furious gold rush, spurred by a call last year from the Bush administration and politicians from farm states to produce more renewable fuels to curb America’s reliance on oil. But the new study by the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group, found that the number of ethanol plants coming on line has been underreported by more than 25 percent by both the Agriculture Department and the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry’s main lobbying group.

The Earth Policy Institute says that 79 ethanol plants are under construction, which would more than double ethanol production capacity to 11 billion gallons by 2008. Yet late last month, the Renewable Fuels Association said there were 62 plants under construction.

The lower tally has led to an underestimate of the grain that would be needed for ethanol, clouding the debate over the priorities of allocating corn for food and fuel, said Lester R. Brown, who has written more than a dozen books on environmental issues and is the president of the Earth Policy Institute. “This unprecedented diversion of corn to fuel production will affect food prices everywhere,”................

Bio fuels in the US currently provide a tiny fraction of the fuel used in this country. The attempted ramping up of Bio Fuel production as seen above is already encountering problems as seen in the article above. Remember this fact:
" We ( the world's population's ) currently consume over 400 times as much energy as the planet's biosphere produces each year, so even if we comandeered 100 percent of the earth's plants to biofuels production, we would end up with less than one four hundredth of what we currently get out of fossil fuels ". Biofuels will a make a relative " few " people a lot of money, but it won't solve our national coming fuels crisis.