Time Magazine Article on BioFuels

Hello readers. I read a good article this week on bio-fuels and the effect upon the market and the environment.
The article states that when we increase the amount of corn grown for bio-fuel use we inversely affect the amount of corn that we grow for food purposes which makes sense. At the same time that we do this we are also decreasing the area that we we use for growing soy because the bio-fuel crop is more lucrative for farmers. By us decreasing soy output other nations such as Brazil increase their soy crop. Farmers in Brazil who increase their soy cause less grazing land for cattle so this causes ranchers to burn more of the Amazon Rain Forest to convert it to pasture for cattle. The effects are many. First the cost of feed corn goes up, the cost of flour goes up, the cost of soy goes up. The amount of corn that it takes to make one tank of ethanol can provide food for one person for a year. The net carbon affect on the atmosphere goes up because of the deforestation which will take possibly hundreds of years to equalize using soy new vegetable oil based bio-fuel.
Two things that we in America need to consider. One is increasing our use of waste vegetable oil to convert to bio-fuels and the other is to develop the use of sugarcane to convert to bio-fuels.
Corn and soy are food crops and should be grown primarily for those purposes. Using the waste oils from either provides an additional benefit while not impacting the use of them for the food chain. Using sugarcane for bio-fuel will increase the cost of sugar however the use of sugar in the American diet would greatly benefit from a higher cost - maybe we would not eat so much of it and many of us would be a lot healthier.
My thoughts for now.