Green Daily

The idea sounded good -- we could solve our fuel woes by simply growing fuel. What's more renewable than growing a crop?

Some major downsides was recently described in a United Nations report this week. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that, while biofuels could partially reduce greenhouse gases, they would cause worse headaches by increasing food prices. The report also found biofuels having little effect on getting drivers to kick their oil habits.

The State of Food and Agriculture report doesn't specifically say how directly biofuels are screwing up food prices, but it does say that an increased demand for biofuels, which are created from growing stuff like corn, sugar, and palm oil, will put more people at risk from hunger.

There could even be a problem with the claims of biofuels helping the whole global warming thing. Turns out the cultivation and processing of these crops, along with clearing trees to plant them, could offset gains made by switching from old-fashioned oil. The report doesn't completely blame biofuels for these problems - it also points out that food prices have become more volatile because of richer diets in India and China along with recently poor harvests.