Reporting on the food crisis in Haiti last week, The Washington Times introduced its readership to the term "Clorox hunger," described as "a hunger so painful it feels like your stomach is being eaten by bleach or battery acid." It's horrifying stuff. But that's what the global food crisis -- which many economists now believe will push 100 million people into "absolute poverty," and which will do far worse to those already below the absolute poverty line -- looks like. Higher food prices mean less food. In America, that's an annoyance. In other countries, that's a death sentence. And it's in no small part our fault. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the run-up in prices is the product of increased US demand for biofuels. When you demand a lot more corn for energy, there's less of it for food. And as Tom Philpott notes, "When farmers scramble to plant corn to cash in on the ethanol boom, they plant less of other stuff like soy and even wheat, putting upward pressure on their prices." So what's with the demand for corn? An article in this month's Foreign Affairs, entitled "How Boifuels Could Starve the Poor," lays it out, and shows how the situation could become much worse:
