Far more destructive and shameful is taking arable land out of circulation to build housing allotments on it. There is land that is great for housing and is terrible for farming, it may not be as conveniently located but that's what living in the burbs is all about... the commute.

I disagree about using food crops for fuel. The problem lies, as you implied, in diverting food production facilities into fuel production. However traveling through the Midwest one can find vast stretches of arable land that lie fallow as a result of the shrinking farm base. Putting more land into production and increasing the number of farmers is the answer. How to get there, well commodity prices must rise in order to coerce more people into farming. What drives a rise in commodity prices, scarcity of those commodities. Capitalism works but it is a slow turning wheel. Stop crying that the sky is falling and let the process work itself out.