Ethanol demand helps fuel increasingly expensive food

Published July 19, 2007 4:00am ET



America’s growing appetite for ethanol fuel derived from corn is having a ripple effect on prices for everything from beer to pizza, chocolate to ice cream, and pasta to cheese, experts said.

Growing corn for ethanol production has been encouraged through government subsidies. Milk and items that contain milk products have increased in price partly because the price of corn feed has gone up about 73 percent over the past 12 months, according to Ephraim Leibtag, an economist for the Economic Research Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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