US agriculture secretary advocates for biofuel production at Paris Air Show

Surely 'Biofuel' increases cost per gallon, although it does diversify supply from politically unstable parts of the world. However it also increases the cost of food, by competing for land use with food crops in a world which is already unable to feed its population at today’s prices.
In recent history the Japanese went to war to secure oil supplies and the West became involved [and still are involved] in Iraq. But the Germans, as recalled by Albert Speer on his release from Spandau Prison; fought their war from 1940 on Synthetic Oil produced from Coal.
There is a lot of Coal in the World. Perhaps we should revisit Coal-Oil Conversion. When you treat a ton of coal in the Karrick Reduction Process you get a barrel of oil, about 2,500 cubic feet of coal gas; and a residue of market-ready smokeless solid fuel.
A Karrick Reduction Plant would supply town gas; refinery distillates, including aircraft fuel; a power station, and smokeless fuel. Any surplus smokeless fuel could of course be converted first to synthetic water gas, and then into more oil using another piece of WW.2 technology, the Fischer Process.
Geologists tell us there is enough American coal to last a couple of millennia, and Europe, Australia, and South Africa also possess rich coal fields. These nations are potentially oil-rich if they choose to invest in the technology.

Coal-to-Liquid conversion is not economically attractive. Furthermore, it produces more CO2 than just burning the coal itself - not exactly what we want in fighting global warming.

Unless and until we get a viable carbon capture technology in place we should reduce our use of coal as much as possible. Natural gas is the right way to go. It's clean, its cheap, its abundant.

Ordinary Joe,
Your concerns are valid but you and the general public need to know that pretty much all airlines and current/potential biofuel providers have signed up to "2nd generation" biofuel standards, which require that any aviation biofuel:
1) Not compete with food (i.e. it can't come from a food-based crop, like ethanol comes from corn and sugarcane);
2) Be produced on land that does not cause loss of agriculture or deforestation (i.e. the biofuel must be produced on marginal land that is is not environmentally sensitive and is otherwise useless for agriculture)
3) Cause a significant reduction in CO2 emissions (i.e. processes to make the biofuel can't largely negate the CO2 savings, like happens with processes like corn-to-ethanol or Fischer-Troph).
2nd-generation biofuel sources such as jatropha, biowaste, camelina, and algae won't drive up food prices.