By Julie Bierach, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The Chesterfield-based, National Corn Grower's Association, is responding to a recent statement made by a United Nations independent expert claiming that food crops for biofuels are a quote "crime against humanity."
In his address, Jean Ziegler also called for a 5 year ban on biofuels production to wait for technologies that use agricultural waste rather than crops to produce fuel.
Rick Tolman,CEO of the National Corn Growers Association is outraged. He says genocide is a crime against humanity war crimes are a crime against humanity biofuels are not.
Tolman say Ziegler is welcome to his opinion, but says no one is starving because of biofuels.
"Here in the United States, we produced a record crop this year of corn," says Tolman.
"We will have more corn next year at this time than we have this year, we have a carryover, we have over a 2-billion bushel carryover. Our farmers responded, there is no shortage, our exports are up, so it's completely out of line."
Tolman says the United States is harvesting 13.3 billion bushels of corn and that's more than enough to help meet the needs of global hunger.