Crop switch worsens global food price crisis

[RedEarth]

Source: The Guardian,

Two years ago the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation expected biofuels to help eradicate hunger and poverty for up to two billion people. Yesterday the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon raised real doubt over that policy amid signs that the world was facing its worst food crisis in a generation.

Since the FAO's report in April 2006 tens of thousands of farmers have switched from food to fuel production to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. Spurred by generous subsidies and an EU commitment to increase the use of biofuels to counter climate change, at least 8m hectares (20m acres) of maize, wheat, soya and other crops which once provided animal feed and food have been taken out of production in the US.

In addition, large areas of Brazil, Argentina, Canada and eastern Europe are diverting sugar cane, palm oil and soybean crops to biofuels. The result, exacerbated by energy price rises, speculation and shortages because of severe weather, has been big increases of all global food commodity prices.

Lester Brown, director of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, said yesterday that land turned to biofuels in the US alone in the last two years would have fed nearly 250 million people with average grain needs. "This year 18% of all US grain production will go to biofuels. In the last two years the US has diverted 60m tonnes of food to fuel. On the heels of seven years of consumption of world grains exceeding supply, this has put a great strain on the world's grain supplies," he said.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/05/food.biofuels

[Triana]

1. Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change

Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change
Authors:

Timothy Searchinger,1* Ralph Heimlich,2 R. A. Houghton,3 Fengxia Dong,4 Amani Elobeid,4 Jacinto Fabiosa,4 Simla Tokgoz,4 Dermot Hayes,4 Tun-Hsiang Yu4

Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5867/1238?rss=1

[Zhade]

12. Ooops, guess I was wrong to support switchgrass.

Red-faced!

So, um, what DO we do about energy needs?

[burrowowl]

2. An example of not

THINKING THINGS THROUGH! or HALF-ASSES THINKING!

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. Or of profits only thinking. Same thing I guess.

:shrug:

[Lorien]

3. I noticed on Bill Moyers tonight that his guest was blaming high food

prices on the "more affluent" Indians and Chinese. No mention of biofuels or the cost of fuel in general. NOBODY is talking about demanding higher mileage vehicles and more TRULY clean, renewable fuels, though. They will squeeze every last penny of profit out of fossil fuels and gas guzzling penis extensions before doing the moral and logical thing.

[harmonicon]

4. bullshit bullshit bullshit

You know what will cause a food shortage? Capitalism. Biofuels my ass. Farmers will grow what pays top dollar.

[progressive_realist]

5. Maybe you missed the part about subsidies

With subsidies it can be more profitable to grow for bio-fuels whereas without subsidies it would be more profitable to grow food for humans.

[harmonicon]

8. but we shouldn't blame bio-fuels on that

The ethanol boom has helped a lot of US farmers and created new small cooperative business in economically struggling parts of the country. It's easy to say that people used to grow crops for food, and now they've switched to crops for fuel, but it's more complicated than that. In the last 15 years, for instance, Zimbabwe has changed from being the bread-basket of Africa to being a food importing country.

Isn't the real problem possible global WTO-style trade? It seems like countries should be looking out for their own instead of the inexorable push of global profit.

[Pale Blue Dot]

9. That's a false dichotomy.

It's quite possible that food shortages can be caused by both bio-fuel production and the effects of capitalism. It's not an either/or proposition.

[formercia]

6. Investing in Public Transportation

and switching from trucks to rail carriers.

There are hundreds of ways to reduce energy consumption but it won't happen because Big Oil and vehicle manufacturers won't let it happen.

[Zhade]

13. I'd LOVE to live car-free. I live in L.A., though, and they killed our trolleys decades ago.

: (

[formercia]

20. The trolleys were bought up by GM

so they could sell buses.

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. So True!

[FarCenter]

7. Sugar and Starch are Hydrocarbons

Just like gasoline and diesel oil.

With a little chemical engineering, you can turn one into the other. Therefore, net of conversion costs, you should expect the price of a Calorie to equalize between foodstuffs and fuels.

[Igel]

17. Nuh-uh.

Sugar and starch aren't hydrocarbons, they're carbohydrates.

Converting from one to the other isn't a trivial matter. Nobody makes gasoline or diesel from carbohydrates; they make ethanol from carbohydrates which is added to the petroleum distillate we call "gasoline". (Note that all important -OH in the ethanol, the "-ol" part of the word "ethanol"--no reason to remove that bond, since the energy needed wouldn't be equal to the energy obtained by reinstituting that C-O bond when it's burned).

[FarCenter]

19. I stand corrected on the chemistry, but the economics are the same

You can start out with carbohydrates, most easily with sugars and starches, and get to liquid fuels suitable for internal combustion engines.

You can also start out with animal or vegetable oils, and fuel diesel engines with that.

Or you can start with crude oil and crack and refine it to get gasoline or diesel.

In all these cases you start out with something solid or thick and gooey and convert it to a liquid fuel that can be vaporized in fuel injectors and whtich contains enough carbon and hydrogen atoms to provide power when combined with atomospheric oxygen.

Note also that production of food in the US today requires lots of hydrocarbon fuels -- my recollection is that putting one Calorie of food on the American table requires more than one Calorie of fossil fuels for tillage, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, harvesting, processing, transportation, packaging, warehousing, refrigeration, ...

[Zhade]

10. Sweet, so we can drive to the grocery store to look at empty shelves!

How forward-thinking!

Btw, some of us knew biofuels using FOOD was fucking ridiculous.

[roamer65]

15. Water problems figure into this as well.

Saudi Arabia will cease irrigated wheat production over the next few years and China's wheat production has actually been dropping due to water concerns.

[bemildred]

16. Gee, who could have predicted this?

I guess keeping the price of oil from going exponential is more important than feeding the world's billions.

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. Greed trumps feeding the world's billions, right georgie?