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By Lester R. Brown, Environment News Service, Jan 25.  We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.The world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. Prices are double those of a year or two ago. ……Whereas previous dramatic rises in world grain prices were weather-induced, this one is policy-induced and can be dealt with by policy adjustments. The crop fuels program that currently satisfies scarcely 3 percent of U.S. gasoline needs is simply not worth the human suffering and political chaos it is causing. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into ethanol, it would satisfy scarcely 18 percent of our automotive fuel needs.The irony is that U.S. taxpayers, by subsidizing the conversion of grain into ethanol, are in effect financing a rise in their own food prices. It is time to end the subsidy for converting food into fuel and to do it quickly before the deteriorating world food situation spirals out of control
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Filed under: biofuels
All Biofuels Aren’t Created EqualBiofuels can be made from nearly any organic material, but corn, which is the source of 95 percent of U.S. ethanol, would reduce global warming emissions only about 15 percent on average compared to gasoline. Cellulosic ethanol, made from switchgrass, slash, and agricultural byproducts, could cut emissions by more than 90 percent. But it’s not commercially available. And then there’s sugarcane ethanol, which is booming in Brazil, soybean biodiesel, and cooking grease biodiesel, even biodiesel made from algae — all with their various pros and cons.
Want help separating the wheat from the chaff? Check out “Bio-hope, Bio-hype” in the most recent issue of Sierra, complete with a useful chart comparing six different biofuels.
Filed under: biofuels
by C. Ford Runge & Benjamin Senauer, Chronogram Magazine, May 30.
Now, thanks to a combination of high oil prices and even more generous government subsidies, corn-based ethanol has become the rage.
The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States.
The industry’s growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of US domestic corn supplies within a few years.
The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in 10 years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.
This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, which will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn-which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security.
read more (Chronogram Magazine)
