Ethanol is heading world into hunger catastrophe

[Bluebear]

The boom in ethanol fuels in the United States and elsewhere could have devastating effects on food prices and worsen world hunger, a new study argues.

The study by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota said the rush into ethanol threatens to divert massive amounts of corn and other food crops into biofuels.

The researcher write in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs that governments should stop incentives for ethanol until biofuels can be economically produced from sources other than corn and soybeans.

"Resorting to biofuels is likely to exacerbate world hunger," they said. "Several studies by economists at the World Bank and elsewhere suggest that caloric consumption among the world's poor declines by about half of one percent whenever the average prices of all major food staples increase by one percent."

The researchers said the surge in energy prices along with subsidies and incentives given by governments has pushed farmers into diverting massive amounts of corn, oilseeds and other crops into ethanol.

In the US, this affects corn, but in Brazil it involves sugar cane and in Africa cassava.

"If, all other things being equal, the prices of staple foods increased because of demand for biofuels, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods," they wrote.

"That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted."

They said the biofuel craze could push up corn prices 20 percent by 2010 and 41 percent by 2020. This could affect other crops such as rice or wheat, since farmers are converting their fields to corn or other plants more profitable because of their potential for ethanol.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070403185953.lp28y5e1&show_article=1&catnum=0

[TomInTib]

1. Lemme tell you what to do with that ear of corn, Little Man...

duct-tape it to your motherfucking bicycle seat.

That's where the whole scheme should have gone to stay.

[Tyler Durden]

2. We could do wind, tidal, geothermal....

We could do mass transit...

What do we do? Take the food out of the mouths of hungry people and shove it in our God Damned Gas Tanks.

We are WORSE than Imperial Rome.

[Preston120]

3. Yes but ADM will make a mint.

Poor people getting screwed again.

[Mister Ed]

4. I chatted with this author (C. Ford Runge) at a picnic a couple of years ago.

He extremely well-informed, and quite an incisive thinker.

I'm surprised, though, that this article doesn't mention another problem with ethanol: it takes a phenomenal amount of fossil fuel to grow the corn to produce the ethanol.

An article I read in Smithsonian magazine a while back explained that growing corn is essentially a process by which fossil fuels are converted to food. In order to grow, the corn requires huge amounts of nitrogen, which is supplied by huge amounts of chemical fertilizer, the production of which demands huge amounts of electricity, which is produced by burning huge amounts of fossil fuel.

Burning ethanol made from corn yields just a fraction of the energy, in the form of fossil fuels, that was used to produce it.

The Smithsonian article is a little long, but a very interesting read:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/presence-jul06.html?c=y&page=3

[ColbertWatcher]

5. STOP THE LIES

This myth has already been debunked.

Please stop rehashing it.

"Making a Killing from Hunger: (The real causes of the food crisis)" by DUer Hannah Bell

[Bluebear]

6. Hmm University of Minnesota vs some anonymous DU non-donor.

Sorry, you lose :)

[ColbertWatcher]

7. By your logic Stanfod Univ Prof John Yoo should be writing our interrogation policy...

...oh wait, he does.

BTW, the "anonymous DU non-donor" quoted the World Bank.

It looks like you fail.

[Bluebear]

8. I was referring to you. Now make intelligent conversation or shoo.

[LTR]

9. Ethanol is not the only cause of this

Ethanol's been getting a pretty bad rap when it comes to corn production. Much of it is derived by inedible parts of corn or industrial crops. Most of what's increasing the price of crops in general is oil prices and our rapidly sinking dollar. It's certainly not all ethanol's fault.

I have always maintained that ethanol is not an immediate miracle cure. It's a technology that has long-term potential, rather than a short-term fix. There are many other crops out there that have higher energy yields than corn, such as sugar cane (best), beets, switchgrass and others. It's just that corn gets all the subsidies.

I don't think we should just chuck biofuels out the window completely. That's short-sighted thinking. Researchers are working on ways to extract ethanol from more unused portions of plants and to get higher energy yields. Like I said, it's a work in progress. Perhaps we should consult with Brazil to find out how they do it. They have a very effective and successful self-sustaining biofuel industry, though it does help that they have a massive sugar crop and lots of oil. They don't import oil at all.

[DemoTex]

10. Read Paul Theroux's essays on China from the 1990s ..

Theroux describes China's massive conversion of agricultural land and production into huge new manufacturing "cities," all to feed the beast that is un-checked US consumerism. He also writes about the increasing percentage of China's GNP (like the USA's) that is derived from arming the world.

Guns or butter? Wal-Mart trinkets or butter?