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Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing
Andrew Martin, New York Times
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.
But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.
… Many specialists in food policy consider government mandates for biofuels to be ill advised, agreeing that the diversion of crops like corn into fuel production has contributed to the higher prices. But other factors have played big roles, including droughts that have limited output and rapid global economic growth that has created higher demand for food.
… C. Ford Runge, an economist at the University of Minnesota, said it is “extremely difficult to disentangle” the effect of biofuels on food costs. Nevertheless, he said there was little that could be done to mitigate the effect of droughts and the growing appetite for protein in developing countries.
“Ethanol is the one thing we can do something about,” he said. “It’s about the only lever we have to pull, but none of the politicians have the courage to pull the lever.”
(15 April 2008)
There are multiple lines of arguments against ethanol, especially corn but also cellulosic.
Just on the face of it, growing biofuels to support the car habit is a suicidal prospect. Consider the number of cars planned for China and India and the decreasing supplies of oil. Could sufficient quantities of biofuel be grown year-after-year, decade-after-decade? What is the morality in light of the growing numbers of mouths to feed?
When I was researching ethanol years ago, I was struck by the lack of consideration to ecology and sustainability. Expensive brochures from government agencies said nothing about the degradation of the soil, the nutrients that would be required.
Slowly, criticism was voiced about the ridiculously low Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), the heavy use of water and fossil fuels in the corn ethanol process, and the lobbying by industrial agriculture.
I don’t recall that competition with food was an early criticism, perhaps because we’d become accustomed to grain surpluses (Lester Brown’s warnings to the contrary).
Journalists for the corporate media were NOT the first to pick up on the criticism. However, to their credit, they began running articles looking into ethanol.
Now, a complicated food/agriculture crisis has hit. The crisis has many causes. To be sure, ethanol is not the only culprit. I might mention the skyrocketing prices of oil and fertilizers, for example.
If we are looking for detailed studies with numbers, perhaps we should first ask the biofuel industry and the government agencies which support it. Where are the numbers to support the counter-intuitive claim that biofuels would not impact the food supply?
-BA
EU defends biofuel goals amid food crises
AFP
The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a “crime against humanity” that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.
“There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels,” said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.
… Their comments came amid growing unease over the planting of biofuel crops as food prices rocket and riots against poverty and hunger multiply worldwide.
(14 April 2008)
At the Independent: Biofuel: the burning question by Cahal Milmo:
“The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?”
UN body urges agriculture reforms to stave off food crisis
Angela Balakrishnan, Guardian
A UN body today called on world leaders to urgently reform farming rules to boost the state of global agriculture and prevent a food crisis that could threaten international security and the fight against poverty.
The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) said in a report that failing to take action would put future generations in jeopardy.
… The study, which was backed by the World Bank and World Health Organisation, examined measures that could reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods and work towards achieving the UN’s millennium development goals.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, which contributed to the report, said food represented 60-80% of consumer spending in developing countries, compared with about 10-20% in industrialised nations. It said investment in agricultural science had decreased and more sustainable, environmentally sound and equitable ways to produce food were needed.
The report calls for a more holistic view of agriculture and urges governments, NGOs and the private sector to work together to ensure the needs of the future are better served.
(15 April 2008)
Also at the Guardian: Key findings of food crisis report (Main points from the UN study of global agriculture).
One less burger, one safer planet
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe
EARTH DAY is a week from today, so brace yourself for cuddly, hug-the-planet blubbering from the presidential candidates. John McCain will tell you we must be the “caretakers of creation” even though he received a zero rating in 2007 from the League of Conservation Voters. Hillary Clinton will tout her 10-step personal home plan on global warming, such as recycling and using efficient light bulbs. Barack Obama will surely tell us we “cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake.”
Ah, but what about hamburgers? When the candidates tell us to stay out of McDonald’s, then we will know their light bulbs are on. The end of timid politics is when they say that with the planet being at stake, you must eat less steak.
With fatal food riots in poor nations, and with China rapidly approaching Western levels of consumption, we in the obese United States must redefine what constitutes, to borrow from McDonald’s, a “happy meal.” Scientists are concluding that along with more fuel-efficient cars and curbing industrial pollution, the simple act of eating less meat could help slow global warming.
… In a 1984 Democratic presidential debate, Walter Mondale chided Gary Hart’s “new ideas” by asking, “Where’s the beef?” The next president needs to put meat on the bones of environmental policy, by telling us to eat less of it.
(15 April 2008)
Global Hot Spots of Hunger Set to Explode
Thalif Deen, IPS
As food prices continue to escalate worldwide, some of the poorest nations in the developing world are in danger of social and political upheavals.
The unrest, which is likely to spread to nearly 40 countries, has been triggered largely by a sharp increase in the prices of staple commodities, including wheat, rice, sorghum, maize and soybeans, according to the United Nations.
Following last week’s food riots in Haiti, which claimed the lives of four people, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appealed to international donors for urgent assistance to one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean.
A meeting of the world’s finance ministers in Washington over the weekend warned that rising food prices were more of a threat to political and social stability than the current crisis in global capital markets.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has singled out six countries with an “exceptional shortfall in aggregate food production and supplies”: Lesotho, Somalia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Iraq and Moldova.
An additional six countries with “widespread lack of access” to food include Eritrea, Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and North Korea.
The steep rise in basic foodstuffs has already sparked demonstrations and/or riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso, while an increase in both fuel and food prices has triggered unrest in Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.
(14 April 2008)
