Repeal ethanol mandates to ease global food shortage

Editorial from the Detroit News.

The only benefit that may come from the widespread flooding in the nation's Midwestern grain belt is that it could provide political cover for washing away the federal government's destructive ethanol mandates.

As much as 4.4 percent of this year's corn crop, or 3.3 million acres, is expected to be lost to the floods covering the central farm states.

Even before the heavy rains, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was predicting food prices would rise 5 percent in 2008.