Don't buy what the grocers are trying to feed you. The recent attacks from the Grocery Manufacturers Association blaming biofuels for rising food costs are deceptive and just plain wrong. The GMA's attacks are not based on sound science, sound economics or common sense. Rather, they are based on the GMA's desire to find an easy target for defending profits, despite the economic hardships placed on American families by skyrocketing gas prices, the mortgage meltdown and tumbling stock markets.
The NBB is committed to fighting the political and corporate interests that are more concerned with protecting their own profits over the health, security and pocketbooks of American families.
I recently testified in a closed meeting of the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, along with other renewable energy groups and with Cal Dooley, President and CEO of the GMA. Some of the points I made that day were that crude oil has risen in price by 100 percent in the last 12 months. In 1974 after the Arab oil embargo, there were significant food price increases, too, but at the time biofuels weren't around to blame for those increases. Energy prices are more than 30 percent higher now than they were in 1974, after being adjusted for inflation, but grain prices now are more than 100 percent less than they were in 1974 after being adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, Senator Charles Grassley has recently spoken out forcefully about the driving force behind the uptick in food prices, saying, "The biggest culprit behind the rising food cost is $135 barrel oil." Biofuels are currently contributing more than eight billion gallons of fuel to the nation's fuel supply, without which fuel prices, and consequently food prices, would be even higher than they are today, according to a Merrill Lynch strategist.
Since Sen. Grassley exposed the GMA's documented public relations smear campaign against biofuels, many others have joined him in his sharp criticism of GMA's efforts, including Senators Byron Dorgan (ND), John Thune (SD), Ben Nelson (NE), Kit Bond (MO), and Ken Salazar (CO). The Senators recognize the critical role of biofuels to reducing our country's dependence on foreign oil and have expressed strong support for continued federal programs that encourage biofuel production and use.
In comments made recently to the National Biodiesel Board at our board meeting in Washington D.C., Sen. Grassley strongly rebuked the GMA for attempting to make biofuels the scapegoat to defend its members' bottom lines. Sen. Grassley told NBB members that America's family farmers are producing more food and fuel than ever before and stressed the importance of keeping our energy dollars here instead of sending them overseas to countries not friendly to the U.S.