You can run a G8 conference on caviar, but not use it as biofuel for your car. One outcome of this week’s meeting of world leaders in Japan should be an end to subsidies for biofuels of uncertain environmental merit but definite harm to some of the world’s poorest people. Subsidising the use of crops as fuel is no substitute for putting a price on carbon emissions.

This week, Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, called for more focus on growing food rather than biofuels. In Britain, a government agency proposed that the European Union should rein back its biofuel targets. Both are right and deserve a wider audience.