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Chinese shoppers buy all sorts of fruits at a massive, morning food market in Beijing on April 20, 2008. The cost of food has increased by around 40 percent since mid-2007 worldwide, and the strain has caused riots and protests in countries like China, Thailand, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Haiti and Egypt. (UPI Photo/Stephen Shaver)

Five months after passing a new alternative fuel mandate, U.S. policymakers are questioning the legislation's wisdom in the face of skyrocketing food prices.

The food versus fuel debate erupted Tuesday at a House hearing on the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which established a progressive renewable fuels standard. The RFS requires that U.S. biofuels production increase almost eight-fold in the next 14 years, from 4.7 billion gallons in 2007 to 36 billion in 2022. While this provision could decrease carbon emissions and U.S. dependence on foreign oil, its impact on food prices is less certain. And with food prices reaching near-record highs, many lawmakers are having second thoughts about the new RFS or amplifying their original doubts, like Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

"The renewable fuel mandate enacted just last December diverts vast acreage from food production to fuel production," Barton said at Tuesday's hearing in the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee. "It also explains the spike in corn prices from $2 a bushel just a couple years ago to the record price of over $6 a bushel last month."

The problems inherent in the new RFS are so detrimental that Barton said he hopes to get rid of it entirely.

"I'm going to be introducing a piece of legislation here in the next week to repeal section 202 (which establishes the RFS) of last year's energy act and go back to the previous 2005 biofuels mandate," Barton said.