Mud cookies and biofuels

I though that behind the increase in prices of food was primarily bad season (in several countries), but it is certainly possible that botched attempts to save the planet by 5-10% of biofuel caused it.
In any case, the consequences are terrible:
"It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
"

Needless to say, this is happening while 32% of Americans are obese.