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U.S. eyes shift away from corn ethanol
Amanda Paulson, The Christian Science Monitor
Worried about high food prices, Congress tries to push the biofuel industry to use nonfood crops.
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America’s love affair with corn-based ethanol is cooling – at least in Washington.
Some legislators blame the rising use of corn as a biofuel as a key factor behind high food prices. Others want to freeze the federal mandate on biofuels production at current levels, reversing legislation passed just a few months ago that increases it through 2022. Still others are pushing to shift tax incentives away from corn-based to cellulose-based ethanol in the nearly completed farm bill.
These moves represent a dramatic backlash against corn ethanol, which until a few months ago was widely viewed as a boon for both farmers and consumers. Many experts worry that Washington’s new skepticism will undo important progress the US has made in replacing foreign oil with domestic energy alternatives. But others say that done right, a shift toward cellulose – nonfood plant material like grasses and crop residues – could reduce US reliance on imported oil just as well as corn does. And it would accomplish it with fewer food and environmental trade-offs.
(1 May 2008)
Scientists advise halt to biofuels
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
Some top international food scientists on Tuesday recommended halting the use of food-based biofuels, such as ethanol, saying it would cut corn prices by 20 percent during a world food crisis.
But even as the scientists were calling for a moratorium, President Bush urged the opposite. He declared the United States should increase ethanol use because of national energy security and high gas prices.
The conflicting messages Tuesday highlighted the ongoing debate over food and fuel needs.
The three senior scientists with an international research consortium pushing a biofuel moratorium said nations need to rethink programs that divert food such as corn and soybeans into fuel, given the burgeoning worldwide food crisis.
(30 April 2008)
Women farmers threatened by biofuels
New Scientist
The image of biofuels is rapidly tarnishing. Already under fire for displacing food production and tropical forests, they are now charged with marginalising poor rural women.
In a report published on 21 April, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that women subsistence farmers will be evicted to make way for huge biofuel plantations. The most vulnerable women already suffer extreme inequalities in African, Asian and Caribbean countries. These same countries are now hoping to cash in on the growing demand for biofuels in rich western countries.
“These women don’t have access to land, or the land they do occupy is owned by men,” says report author, Yianna Lambrou. “So if the men decide to set up a biofuel plant, the women would simply be evicted.” That would push them onto marginal land barely capable of supporting crops, and also deny them easy access to water, as biofuel production would have first claim on the supply.
(30 April 2008)
Wheat, Corn and Ethanol Fight for Acres
Bruce Babcock, Washington Post
Economics professor Bruce Babcock, director of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development at Iowa State University, was online Wednesday, April 30 at noon ET to explain how high ethanol prices are impacting farmers individually and the world as a whole as less and less of the nation’s farmland is used for growing food crops.
(30 April 2008)
