You Can't Eat What You Put in the Gas Tank

In the face of severe increases in food prices both domestically and internationally, the editors of National Review rightly call upon the federal government to reverse laws diverting the nation's food supply into an energy source:

The federal government can do something right now to provide relief to Americans facing higher food prices: Repeal the ethanol mandate. The diversion of one-third of the American corn crop into ethanol production is a direct result of the 2005 law that required gasoline makers to buy 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol — a mandate that the 2007 energy bill President Bush signed in December increases to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

This is surely right. Whatever the correct responses of the nation should be regarding greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil, they do not include turning farmland into a fuel resource. Proponents of that course meant well, but it is time to admit they are risking great harm.