From NY - times.com
GRIFFIN, Ind. — In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages... Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
"Stop wasting corn crops on ethanol, which I believe expends more fossil fuel to produce than the energy released when ethanol is burned. "
With supplies of most of the key commodities at their lowest levels in decades, there is little room for error this year. American farmers are among the world's top producers, supplying 60 percent of the corn that moves across international borders in a typical year, as well as a third of the soybeans, a quarter of the wheat and a tenth of the rice.
"If we have bad crops, it's going to be a wild ride," said the Agriculture Department's chief economist, Joseph Glauber. "There's just no cushion."
"There's no doubt about it, we're not going to have the rice to export," said Carl Frein of Farmers Marketing Service in Brinkley, Ark. "Poor countries like Haiti, I don't know what they're going to do."
"I don't know if this is the worst year we've ever had, but it's moving up the list pretty quick," the farmer said.