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Seeing Sugar’s Future in Fuel
Clifford Krauss, New York Times
LOREAUVILLE, La. – Todd Landry, a farmer who conjures big stands of sugar cane from the muddy fields of southern Louisiana, has been struggling lately against droughts and freezes and hurricanes. Come January he will confront another peril: expanded sugar imports from Mexico.
“Will we have a flood of sugar coming across the border?” Mr. Landry wondered in a Cajun drawl. “Survival is on our minds every minute of every day.”
Mr. Landry and other sugar producers think they have spotted a life raft, and its name is ethanol.
Taking a cue from Midwestern farmers who have improved their lot by selling corn to ethanol distilleries, sugar cane and sugar beet farmers want an ethanol deal of their own, paid for by American taxpayers.
A little-noticed provision in the new farm bill working its way through Congress would oblige the Agriculture Department to buy surplus domestic sugar caused by the expected influx of Mexican sugar next year. Then the government would sell it, most likely at a steep discount, to ethanol producers to add to their fermentation tanks. The Bush administration is fighting the measure.
(18 October 2007)
New tensions accompany promise of alternative fuels
Lynn Hicks, Des Moines Register
Biofuels bring hope, but problems follow from the Amazon to Asia to Latin America
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First came the boom. Now, the backlash.
Biofuels have gotten a bad name around the globe, despite their ability to reduce oil use.
Whether the blame is fair or not, a negative image could limit the potential to create more environmentally beneficial fuels, experts say.
Biofuels appear at the root of examples of environmental and humanitarian abuses around the world:
– Scientist Jane Goodall says the rush to grow biofuels is threatening primate habitat in Uganda and Indonesia.
– Brazil is trying to crack down on near-slave labor conditions that have helped keep down the cost of ethanol production.
– Paramilitary groups are forcing peasants from their land in Colombia to make room for palm oil plantations, raising the specter of “blood biofuels.”
These problems and others mean the biofuels boom could lead to unrest and uprising in some nations, one study says.
The dark side of biofuels could potentially overshadow their positive effects, said Raya Widenoja, biofuels researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group. Benefits include cooling an overheating climate and boosting developing economies.
“Biofuels do have the potential to herald in a brighter, more sustainable future – if they are developed wisely,” she said.
Widenoja and others worry the biofuels backlash could threaten that future if public outcry persuades politicians to cut research money or projects. Funding is critical to develop the next generation of biofuels. Ethanol from sources other than corn and soybeans could address some of the negative aspects, Widenoja said.
(1X October 2007)
More complete than the usual biofuels article. -BA
IMF concerned by impact of biofuels on food prices
AFP
The IMF warned Wednesday that an increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could drive up food prices in poor countries.
“The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues,” the International Monetary Fund said in its twice-yearly report on the world economy.
It called for greater international coordination to ensure that policies promoting biofuels take account of their impact on consumer prices.
(18 October 2007)
