This is in response to the Sun Journal editorial “It’s time to phase out ethanol gas” (May 22).

Maine’s legislators are right to urge the federal government to address the Renewable Fuel Standard and amend ethanol-blending mandates that are forcing rapidly rising food costs upon families in Maine and across the world.

As the RFS pits food producers against fuel producers vying for increasingly expensive corn, consumer food costs keep rising, especially for meat, milk and eggs due to the rising cost of feed.

And rising prices don’t stop at the border. Since 2005, U.S. ethanol expansion cost Mexico up to $3.2 billion in higher corn prices — roughly $500 million per year, or 20 times the amount that Mexico spends annually on its support program for small maize and wheat farmers.

In Guatemala, U.S. ethanol policy caused food import costs to rise by $28 million in September 2011 — an amount roughly equivalent to U.S. food aid to Guatemala that year. Simply put, the RFS is cancelling out U.S. aid to Guatemala. This is troubling in light of persistent child malnutrition rates around 50 percent in the country.

The impact of the RFS on world food prices is so profound that the United Nations has called on the United States to suspend its ethanol program in order to avert a global food crisis.

Those struggling with poverty in the U.S. and around the world cannot afford rising prices for basic foods. It is time for the federal government to follow Maine’s lead and rethink the federal corn ethanol mandate.

Kristin Sundell, Washington, D.C., senior policy analyst, ActionAid USA