Biofuel use 'increasing poverty'

[TechBear_Seattle]

Biofuel use 'increasing poverty'

The replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more than 30 million people worldwide into poverty, an aid agency report says.

Oxfam says so-called green policies in developed countries are contributing to the world's soaring food prices, which hit the poor hardest.

The group also says biofuels will do nothing to combat climate change.

Its report urges the EU to scrap a target of making 10% of all transport run on renewable resources by 2020.

The article continues at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7472532.stm

[yourout]

1. Food prices are going up because the cost of growing them is going up. I suspect the price of oil...

going up is directly having a greater impact than the demand increase caused by Biofuels.

Big oil is trying to spin this as a Biofuel problem rather than a big oil problem.

[NJCher]

2. bingo

did you see this, which I posted last night?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=245&topic_id=71420&mesg_id=71420



Cher

[LTR]

5. Food prices are also rising due to the same reason oil is

Commodities traders.

Prices are up even for non-fuel commodities.

[losthills]

3. "biofuels will do nothing to combat climate change. "

That is the sad truth behind the fraudulent "biofuels" house of cards.

The other sad truth is that "biofuels" benefit the oil companies by keeping us wedded to the internal combustion engine.

There was an article on NPR yesterday about school cafeterias struggling to put decent meals on the table in the face of rising food costs. But that won't cause the "biofuels will save us" crowd to actually look at this issue and see how wrong they are....

[Merlot]

4. bushco said he was for biofuels

that's all I needed to hear to know they are bad for us.

[JohnWxy]

6. Here is a very good report, an antidote to the hysteria regarding the rise in commodities prices:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=156158

(From US Dept. of Energy EERE Newsletter)

More Studies Say Biofuels Have a Minor Impact on Food Costs

A new report from New Energy Finance concludes that biofuels are
responsible for at most 8% out of the 168% rise in grain prices since
2004, and for at most 17% out of the 136% rise in global food prices.
As a proportion of the total rise in prices, biofuels can take the
blame for less than 5% of the rise in grain prices and at most 12.5%
of the rise in global food prices. The report concludes that
population growth placed the greatest pressure on grain prices, and
that growth was not matched by increases in yields. The increasing
price of fossil fuels also caused 35.2% of the increase in grain
prices. See the New Energy Finance press release.

Meanwhile, DOE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate that
the United States would use an additional 7.2 billion gallons of
gasoline in 2008 if there were no biofuels available. Ethanol
production alone has moderated U.S. gasoline prices by an estimated
20-35 cents per gallon, saving a typical U.S. household as much as
$300 per year. In addition, the price of food commodities has a
limited impact on retail grocery costs in the United States, so
ethanol and biodiesel consumption account for only about 3%-5% of the
increase in U.S. retail grocery prices over the past year and a half.
These statistics were included in a letter sent to Senator Jeff
Bingaman by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Agriculture Secretary
Edward Schafer. See the DOE fact sheet and the full letter.
(more)
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All food prices have gone up dramatically. While growing crops for biofuel has contributed some to this trend it has been a relatively small part of the increase. Wheat and Rice have shot up as much as corn and I don't know anybody whose making fuel out of wheat or rice. The countries hurting really badly import most of their food. This means it has to be shipped from overseas. Ships use diesel fuel and diesel has gone up more than gasoline. Diesel is used in just about all farm equipment too. It sounds amazing but "marketing costs" take up about 80% of the cost of food at the retail level. Farm costs come to about 19% of that retail price.

MOre relevant particulars are that the Ukraine and Australia (major world suppliers of wheat along with the U.S.) the last couple of years have had very bad weather conditions which brought down their wheat harvests.

Also, in the U.S. the amount of acreage planted to wheat INCREASED about 10% from 2006 to 2007. This was the period of great increases in planting of corn for ethanol (by the way the total acreage of corn planted increased from 2006 to 2007 a bit more than the increase in acreage planted to corn for ethanol over that same period).