Rising prices for essentials precede riots in some parts of the developing world. Are biofuels partly to blame?
With gasoline flowing toward $4 a gallon in the U.S., some Americans are trying to figure out what they can cut from their budget to remain behind the wheel. In other parts of the world, high prices for basic items are causing more trouble.
The prices of wheat and rice this year will have doubled since 2004, according to World Bank projections. Soybeans, sugar, soybean oil and corn are expected to be 56% to 79% costlier than in 2004. The bulk of the increases have come in the past year and can be attributed to the West's push to turn these crops into fossil-fuel replacements like ethanol. Food prices will likely remain overinflated until at least 2015, the Bank says.
The result of these rising prices is that 100 million people could slip back into poverty, erasing seven years' worth of gains, Bank President Robert Zoellick warned earlier this month. Food inflation and shortages have sparked riots from Egypt to the Philippines, and six people were killed in Haiti alone during nine days of related unrest there this month.
Soaring oil prices have made it more expensive to transport food products, though the World Bank estimates this and costlier fertilizer account for only 15% of the rise in food prices. Improved eating habits in developing nations are also increasing demand for grains – both for human consumption and to feed livestock, since rapid economic growth in places like China means more people have enough money to buy meat. But the Bank notes that "almost all" of the increased growing of one of the key crops, corn, "went for biofuels production in the U.S."
For a look at what the World Bank says about the food crisis, click here.
While the science of whether ethanol is an efficient use of corn, given its proportional removal from the world's food supply, is beyond me, the current world food crisis points out the fact that there are economic costs and drawbacks with every government mandate and subsidy. There is no such thing as a free lunch. When corn is turned into fuel, it cannot be used for food, and some who would eat that corn will have to buy other food (presumably at a higher price) or go hungry.
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share thisPosted by Stan Guthrie on April 21, 2008 9:36AM
Comments
The variety of corn that is raised for fuel is, sadly, less fit for food than the diverse varieties that used to grow across the Americas. The protein and vitamin content is in the germ, which has been bred in such high-yield strains to be very small, while the high-carb part is proportionally larger, feeding the need for fuel and the demand for that abomination known as "high fructose corn syrup."
Posted by: David Neff at April 21, 2008
I am uncomfortable with the idea of turning food into fuel in America while in other parts of the world people are starving for a lack of food. Maybe as Christians we need to start challenging our country to look at all the fuel we waste with our jet skis, atvs, utvs, high powered boats and Nascar. We could cut a lot of fuel consumption and say the air we breath by just making cuts in these very wasteful enterprises that just consume and really do not produce anything good for the rest of the world. Furthermore, using corn to make ethanol destroys the environment by destroying marginal land that normally would never be planted that have benefited wildlife.
Posted by: Jeff Fairchild at April 21, 2008
It was never a good idea to subsidize corn-to-ethanol (unless you're running for President and the Iowa caucuses are the first stop). There are better things to make ethanol from. But biofuels are only one of three pieces to the liquid fuels puzzle. We have to build more energy-efficient cars, and stop building sprawling cities that require cars to be part of our basic existence. There is also much more to the economics of the current food crisis than subsidizing corn ethanol; it's part of a "perfect storm" of reinforcing economic factors.
Posted by: Rusty Pritchard at April 21, 2008
The world community is going to face a serious food shortage.
People with hard currency in other developing countries like China
and India think that they can buy food with the money they have.
The vicious circle is going to end up in serious international
crisis and the standard of living of the middle class also will
downgrade. Those petroleum oil producing countries are in an
utopia about their windfall profits, but they will have to spend
a lot more money for all other commodities. America was the granary
of the world, but now America will not be able to afford to be
the granary any more.
Posted by: A. S. Mathew at April 21, 2008
I am also concerned using corn and other food for fuel. We have a limited amount of fertile topsoil in which to grow food. If the Ethanol industry expands significantly, we will have a new crisis on our hands, no fertile soil in which to grow food.
Energy is neither destroyed or created, just changed to another form.
I found a fairly good article that outlines the key issues here.
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=1
Posted by: James Bellman at April 23, 2008
We are seeing the consequences to our response to a bogus science, i.e. global warming.
Transportation is an essential aspect of any modern society. To give up our cars is to give up our standard of living. It sounds nice to be able to walk to shopping until you have to bring six full bags of groceries home. Should we all get a cart?
More refieneries, more off shore and Alaska drilling and more nuclear plants would help. Alternative energy sources will never be adequate (including wind, solar, wave, etc.).
We forget that the Creator of all things is also the sutainer of all things. Yes we should be good stewards of what God gives us, but we do not have to commit societal suicide in the process.
Posted by: Dudley Robertson at April 25, 2008
The amount of mis-information and outright misrepresentation of the facts concerning our energy "crisis" amazes me. It is not corn-to-ethanol that is the problem; it is not an issue of losing our topsoil to increased corn production; it is an issue of how badly things such as economies get screwed up when politicians take over. Our energy problem is Congress, pure and simple; a Congress which has allowed itself to become lackeys for the extreme environmentalists who have crippled our American energy production system while the people of this country have sat idly by and permitted that to take place. We, the people, have blown it by electing incompetents and putting them in charge of our nation's energy policy. Until we clean out Congress, the situation will not change.
Posted by: Tim Reeves at April 28, 2008
Tim Reeves is right: many Christians worship the god of bigger government. Jesus tells us to show the poor mercy, to feed the hungry and heal the sick. I don't know which apocrypha claims Him to tell us to vote for politicians which will create distortive policies and less accountable institutions (than the family or the church).
If the church is to rise, the government must get smaller. We aren't exactly building the hospitals or universities at the same rate we were a century or two ago.
Posted by: caveat bettor at April 29, 2008
Some very intresting ideas and comments. I came across this page whilst looking for cheaper energy prices http://cheaperenergy.wordpress.com My bills haven risen by 35% this year and am now facing yet another increase by these greedy energy companies. (Thankfully I only rent so don't have to worry about a mortgage as well.) Has anyone tried this green and cheap renewable energy? If so, be intrested to know how it worked for you.
Posted by: geof fbaker at October 29, 2008
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