Last Friday Texas Governor Rick Perry requested a waiver from the newly enacted renewable fuel standard, pointing to ‘skyrocketing’ food prices.

Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that biofuels, particularly ethanol, may be a greater part of the rising food price problem than the White House had previously anticipated. AFP reported Rice saying:

"There has been apparently some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort," Rice told a meeting in Washington when asked for the US government's view on skyrocketing food prices.

"Although we believe that while biofuels continue to be an extremely important piece of the alternative energy picture, obviously we want to make sure that it is not having an adverse affect," she said.

"We think that it is not a large part of the problem, but it in fact may be a part of the problem, the ethanol debate," Rice told a gathering of the Peace Corps.

A number of blogs and news agencies are reminding readers that former Cuban President Fidel Castro predicted the current crisis as a byproduct of biofuels more than a year ago. See here and here.  

Also today, UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon led a discussion on immediate emergency steps for disseminating food to hungry around the world. He warned, according to the BBC, that in its absence the food crisis will threaten "economic growth, social progress, and even political security."

Clearly, there’s a range of causes behind the high food costs - oil prices, increasing demand, and failed crops - and arguments over how to reverse the problem will continue, but for now biofuels are holding the hot potato...um, corncob.