President George W. Bush's first trip after his State of the Union address last week was a visit to a Dupont research centre that works on ways to produce ethanol from the stalks and leaves left over in farmers' fields after the harvest.
The timing emphasised the importance of the president's plan to cut US petrol consumption by 20 per cent in 10 years, reducing American dependence on imported energy. Part of the idea is to ramp up the use of fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. But the plan could end up pushing both oil and biofuel prices higher, at least for now - and could have much broader, unintended consequences for the price of food.
