“Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat.”

Hmm…if I’m a wheat farmer, and I realize that the U.S. is going to impose a ridiculous mandate to produce unreasonable amounts of ethanol, and I realize that this will directly push up the demand for corn, well, I’m gonna grow corn instead of wheat. You can see how this affects the amount of wheat grown.

I hardly call changing wheat supplies and prices a global crisis. The crisis is that policies are implemented without any fundamental understanding of the economics that underpin said policies. Government fiat always interferes with the use of real assets, often with negative unforeseen consequences.

Of course, given this “crisis” in agricultural commodities and food prices, governments will feel emboldened to do something about *that* instead of, oh, I don’t know, stopping their efforts to decide for the rest of us what the best way to produce energy is.