Ethanol boom won't threaten food supply: analysts

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Fears of world food shortages caused by booming use of sugar cane and corn to produce ethanol fuel for motor vehicles are overblown and politically motivated, analysts and politicians said on Monday.
Ethanol producers in Brazil and the United States have been defending themselves from warnings by Cuban President Fidel Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez that growing use of biofuels will worsen hunger in the developing world by encouraging farmers to switch from food crops.
But many agronomists and global political leaders argue that the world has enough arable land to ramp up biofuel production without risking the food supply.
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"No serious person can affirm that creating jobs and adding value to existing jobs in the countryside is a risk to the poor people of the world," Felipe Gonzalez, Spain's former prime minister, said at the opening session of a two-day ethanol summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil's business capital.
"This is a false ideological debate," he added, in a swipe at the leftist firebrands Castro and Chavez.
Since ceding power to his younger brother 10 months ago because of health problems, Castro has penned two editorials attacking U.S. plans to increase ethanol production as "genocidal."
Chavez, whose country is a major oil exporter, has said substituting gasoline with ethanol would be "true madness." Continued...
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