2010Jan22: 25% of the total U.S. grain crop in 2009 (about 107 million tons of grain) ended up as ethanol to fuel cars. “The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels,” said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a thinktank that conducted the analysis of US Department of Agriculture data (Guardian.co.uk).
Reference: Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/22/quarter-us-grain-biofuels-food
Read the Earth Policy Institute’s press release – Data Highlights: U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/2010_datarelease6/
Image Description: (top) U.S. Grain Used for Ethanol, 1980-2009. Source: USDA. (middle) Number of Undernourished People in the World 1969-2009. Source: FAO. (bottom) Number of People Who Could be Fed by the U.S. Grain Used to Produce Ethanol. Source: EPI, UN, USDA. Images Credit: Earth Policy Institute. Images Location: Earth Policy Institute http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/2010_datarelease6/ Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.