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"Food prices have risen 83 percent in the last three years.”\nThat’s an estimate from the World Bank regarding inflation worldwide. Inflation is bad for everyone, but for households suffering from poverty – in 2001, the World Bank estimated 1.1 billion people lived on less than $1 a day, and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day – a price increase of this magnitude is potentially fatal. And this danger is evidenced by what’s going on – food riots have broken out in Haiti, Egypt and Ethiopia; armed troops are being used to protect crops and food storage centers in Pakistan and Thailand; and many countries are banning or cutting back on food exports in order to keep more food in domestic supply.\nThe problem is known – but the big controversy starts when officials take a look at this inflation and ask, “Where is this coming from?”\nFingers are being pointed: Many leaders from the developing world blame the U.S. for our ethanol usage, citing the increased demand for corn as the culprit for disproportionate contributions to increased demand – thus higher inflation – for food overall. India’s finance minister called ethanol a “crime against humanity.”\nBut many in the United States are quick to counter these accusations by pointing at other global variables, such as the double-digit growth rates in China. As the world’s largest nation achieves higher and higher living standards due to economic growth, lifestyles are changing, which accounts for new additions to Chinese demand, such as meat-inclusive diets and an unprecedented call for petroleum.\nWho’s right? They both are. The question is what we can do about it.\nWhile the causes for this global rise in prices are multifaceted, a portion of it is definitely due to ethanol. The International Food Policy Research Institute quotes ethanol-related factors at 25 to 33 percent responsible for increased demand; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, which is less critical of ethanol, quotes them at 10 to 15 percent. Whatever its true extent, it’s clear that alternative energy research is partially to blame for rising prices that are severely hurting millions of people in developing nations. \nAlternative energy is certainly a step in the right direction. But it’s not all-or-nothing. Allowing some degree of trade-off in economic efficiency (read: The alternative energy research movement signifies our being more conscientious about unchecked petroleum consumption) doesn’t mean we should abandon all “keeping count” within that new paradigm. Ethanol from corn is a step in the right direction away from a singular energy source, but we should simultaneously be thinking about more efficient ways to get away from oil. \nAnd alternatives do exist – Gulf Ethanol, an alternative energy company focused on delivery to North American marketplaces, announced Monday that it will not use food-based crops for the production of its biofuels, opting instead for processing sorghum, switchgrass and other non-food biomass into a cellulose powder that can be converted to ethanol. “We won’t burn your food,” said JT Cloud, president of Gulf Ethanol.\nIn light of a seriously alarming international crisis, this is one move in the right direction.