There seems to be no end to the rhetoric bouncing around between agricultural experts, critics and media about what’s driving food costs. Biofuels are still one of the most common scapegoats for why we’re paying more for our food than ever before. But the Farm Foundation wants to get to the root of it all. That’s why it sought out three academics from Purdue University to research more than a dozen studies and determine the “truth” behind what the organization calls “one of the most important issues facing agriculture today.” The Farm Foundation hopes the findings of their report will offer policy makers an objective source to refer to when facing the challenges of today’s food system.

Wally Tyner is one of the professors who was a part of the three-man team that conducted the study. The agricultural economics guru says his team found three major driving factors in high food prices:

“The first is global trends in production and consumption of agricultural commodities. The second is has to do with sort of macro economic factors, the depreciation of the dollar. And the third has to do with biofuels. And these are linked in some ways but in some ways its like a perfect storm of all these things coming together at the same time that has led to the huge run-up in prices.”

In this DomesticFuel Cast, we hear from Neal Conklin, President of Farm Foundation and Wally Tyner, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Here is the Domestic Fuel Cast #7:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/domesticfuel/df-podcast-07.mp3]

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