Dennis Boerema is planting exactly what the world needs right now: corn.

Demand for all uses of the grain is escalating -- as food, as a fuel, as feed for cows, poultry and pigs -- and that's one factor driving prices up worldwide.

This year, North Carolina farmers expect to plant nearly 1 million acres of corn. Last year, they planted 1.1 million acres, more than they had in a decade. Almost all the corn Boerema and other North Carolina farmers grow gets fed to livestock.

"It's a worldwide market," said Boerema, 51, who has farmed with his brother, Edward, in Eastern North Carolina for more than 30 years. "It's because of the demand for corn for ethanol."

Although Boerema Farm's corn isn't used to produce ethanol -- at least not yet -- the impact of the fuel is being felt there. Because more corn from the Midwest is going into ethanol and demand from other countries for grain is rising, prices have increased sharply.

"Price is what makes them move from soybean or cotton to corn," said Ron Heiniger, a professor of crop science at N.C. State University and cropping systems specialist.

Higher worldwide food prices are driven by numerous factors, including higher oil prices, droughts that have cut production in critical farming regions such as Australia, escalating demand in countries such as China and India, and diversion of food crops to biofuels.

The biofuels backlash

This "silent tsunami" of events is threatening to plunge 100 million people into hunger, the United Nation's World Food Program said Tuesday. And it's creating a backlash from critics who say government policies are to blame. Among the biggest culprits cited is the rush to generate biofuels such as corn-based ethanol, which many say has diverted food stocks to fuel.

President Bush signed energy legislation in December that calls for a five-fold increase in ethanol use, to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, in an effort to reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil.

Still, most corn grown in the United States, including North Carolina crops, continues to be used as livestock feed. About 18 percent of domestic corn was processed into ethanol last year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association of ethanol producers.

Most of the 80 million acres planted nationwide is feed corn, used for livestock, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The U.S. is the major grower of corn in the world, so they come to us for feed for their livestock," said Wade Hubers, a farmer in Hyde County.

North Carolina farmers don't even come close to growing enough feed for the state's large swine and poultry industries.

The state's farmers produce roughly 88 million bushels of corn a year, but import 700 to 900 million bushels a year, said Heiniger, the crop science professor.

"If North Carolina was a country all by itself, we would be one of the top five corn-importing countries in the world," he said. "It's no longer that you grow a little grain here and sell it at a corner market, and it ends up in your neighbor's feed lot."

Wealth drives demand

Kelly Zering, an agricultural economist at N.C. State University, attributed the rapid increase in the price of food to increasing wealth and demand by people in developing countries such as India and China. As the middle class grows in those countries, its diet includes more meat. And that requires more grain to feed livestock -- far more grain than would be needed to feed people directly.

"If a significant fraction of the population in Asia enters the middle class in terms of wealth and income and outnumber the middle class in Europe and North America in absolute numbers and begins demanding the same standard of living, that puts tremendous pressure on the fixed resources we have in the world," Zering said.

The demand for more meat in diets in emerging countries will require conversion of more land to growing grain crops, which also requires fertilizers.

"This isn't a good scenario for the environment," said Heiniger, the N.C. State professor. "You go from cultured crops like rice to crops that require input of fertilizers like nitrogen. That is going to have consequences on the environment."

Corn for eggs and meat

Zering said the challenge remains to keep up with increasing global demand for food by increasing productivity of crops and animals. In recent decades, farmers have steadily increased productivity by 1 percent to 2 percent per year, with higher crop yields from land and greater efficiency in raising livestock, he said.

"If we want to have eggs and meat and milk, we're going to have to have grain to feed the animals," Zering said.

"If we aren't able to keep up, productivity-wise, it may mean we switch to different products. It may mean a substitution of less expensive food."