As Prices Soar, U.S. Food Aid Buys Less

[shireen]

Source: New York Times

Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.

The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture.

“The people who are starving and have to rely on food aid, they will suffer,” Jean Ziegler, who reports to the United Nations on hunger and food issues, said in an interview this week.

Corn prices have fallen in recent months, but are still far higher than they were a year ago. Demand for ethanol has also indirectly driven the rising price of soybeans, as land that had been planted with soybeans shifted to corn. And wheat prices have skyrocketed, in large part because drought hurt production in Australia, a major producer, economists say.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/world/29food.html

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I wonder if the people who have been peddling the false promise of ethanol could have predicted this outcome.

[pinto]

1. (aside) Comparison of biofuel efficiency - corn/sugar cane (Nat'l Geographic)

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/biofuels/biofuels-p4.html

Green Dreams
By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.

<snip>

Growers in the emerald desert can get seven harvests from their fields before replanting, and the distilleries recycle their wastewater into fertilizer. Like most of Brazil's usinas, São Martinho consumes no fossil fuel or electricity from the grid; for heat and power it burns cane waste, known as bagasse, typically generating a slight surplus of power. Even the cane trucks and agricultural machinery burn a blend of diesel and ethanol, while the favorite crop duster, a hot little plane called the Ipanema, is the first fixed-wing aircraft built to burn pure alcohol. "We're obsessed with efficiency," says plant director Agenor Cunha Pavan.

While corn ethanol's energy ratio hovers around breakeven, "we get eight units of ethanol for every one unit of fossil fuel," says Isaias Macedo, one of Brazil's leading sugarcane researchers. Experts estimate that producing and burning cane ethanol generates anywhere from 55 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide than gasoline. And Macedo envisions even greater efficiencies. "We can do the same thing with two-thirds or half of the bagasse, better manage tractors in the field, and approach levels of 12 or 13."

[whistle]

2. Another social program trampled by Bush's Wars

[StClone]

3. Sudden it could all go wrong

In a rapid confluence of disasters like war, drought, earthquakes and Hurricanes how quickly we could find a huge portion of the World starving in the cold and dark or dying of thirst in the sun?

[InkAddict]

4. I confess, I haven't been faithful...

in recording a daily click. I resolve to do better.

http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1