Chavez Calls Ethanol Production A "Crime"

[Better Believe It]

Chavez calls ethanol production 'crime'
April 26, 2008
Yahoo News

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says a U.S. push to boost ethanol production during a world food crisis is a "crime."

The socialist leader says he is concerned that so much U.S.-produced corn could be used to make biofuel, instead of feeding the world's poor.

Chavez said Saturday that the corn needed to fill an average car with ethanol would be enough to feed seven people for a year.

Venezuela has pledged to donate more than 350 metric tons (385 U.S. tons) of food to Haiti, where soaring food prices provoked deadly riots earlier this month.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080427/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_ethanol;_ylt=AlXMXR0enKJUqIc_dRpRDXRpl88F

[L. Coyote]

1. Building ethanol plants may be criminal too. Who will pay the tab?

The big business interests have already taken the profits, building the facilities.
The farmers are the investors in many regions. They are the ones who remain at risk!!

The contractors got their money overnight, and they are gone. The investors hold the risk.

[Ganja Ninja]

2. I wonder how much of this world food crisis is just another

manifestation of the Bush administration being incompetent and behind the curve. Shouldn't the agriculture department have been anticipating the shortages caused by the grain to ethanol program and the need to plant more acres to accommodate it?

The largest ever number of acres planted in corn in the US was 1932 when we had 113 million acres. During WWII we planted 95.5 million acres of corn. The number of acres of corn planted in 2008 is 86 million down from 90.5 million in 2007.

If the government is really behind this program why are we not planting a record number of acres? When you look at statistics we seem to be shifting acres from one crop to another but not increasing the overall numbers of acreage.

Are we looking at just another example of the oil men in the white house trying to kill off any competition to the oil industry through indifference and neglect?

[orangerevolution]

3. Remove the farm subsidies that the gov't pays

and let the markets take of the rest.

We pay farmers to not plant on their fields. That is what is happening today.

If they could plant those fields with what the market is demanding, food prices would come down.