Guatemala Rejects US Ethanol Plan
The US-promoted plan of using agricultural products to produce ethanol would bring a world food catastrophe, Guatemala s popular leaders and farmers stated on Thursday.

Orlando Blanco, leader of the Social Organizations Group (COS), told Prensa Latina that to use great quantity of corn and other cereals to extract a gallon of ethanol is really an offense to people who are starving.

"In the case of Guatemala," said Blanco, "this project would cause a devastating crisis because it would wipe out production of basic grains in a country where 50 percent of population live on agriculture."

He warned that since the Free Trade Agreement with United States came into force, there is a latent risk here on the idea of sowing transgenic corn, sugarcane and African palm to produce fuel.

Blanco denounced that the US does not use its own territory for this purpose, but it tries to impose these technologies on Latin America to turn it into a captive market.

This policy was condemned in a recent world forum on food sovereignty held in Mali, because it could generate more hunger and poverty, stated Aparicio Perez, from the National Rural Organizations Coordinator.