Fuel from food? The feast is over. (Salon)

[Dogmudgeon]

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2008/11/23/D94KOK880_food_s_future_biofuels/index.html">Fuel from food? The feast is over.

Nov 23rd, 2008 | AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- In future years we may look back at the Great Mexican Tortilla Crisis of 2006 as the time when ethanol lost its vroom.

Right or wrong, that was when blame firmly settled on biofuels for the surge in food prices. The diversion of American corn from flour to fuel put the flat corn bread out of reach for Mexico's poorest.

...

Food prices rose steadily for the past three years until they peaked last June. Before they retreated, the World Bank said corn prices had tripled since January 2005. Rice and wheat weren't far behind.

Around the world, the poor -- U.N. figures say the number of undernourished is approaching 1 billion -- protested that they were hungrier than ever. Food riots erupted in 18 countries, from Bangladesh to Haiti. Some 75,000 Mexicans marched in their capital, accusing the government of "stealing tortillas." Some countries imposed export bans to hoard their grain stocks.

World grain harvests had soared, reaching a record 2.3 billion tons last year. But demand continued to grow, not only for biofuel but for animal feed to satisfy an increasingly meaty diet for the growing middle class in India and China.

...

I do have another point to raise that I have seldom seen -- biofuel feedstock will compete for nitrogen and other nutrients used by (food) agriculture. Biofuel development should be pursued as part of a comprehensive agricultural program that also restores the soil, which has taken a huge hit in the past century. Recycling nutrients after the carbohydrates are turned into fuel would be a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, I am inclined to think that we are too far gone to reasonably avoid a crash by simple policy and technological improvements. I say "reasonably" because it's certainly not impossible; we just won't make the changes until some crisis is upon us, and those changes will not be thought out very well, as the recent "Tortillas-to-Fuel" episode shows.

Right now, oil is cheap, but demand for it is being destroyed like so many million-dollar houses in Santa Ana season. Biofuel's recent resurgence may be a moot point altogether.

--p!

[izquierdista]

1. Don't use soil at all

Restoring the soil is not necessary if biofuels are produced from algae.

Using corn to make substitutes for gasoline is severely limited thinking. Of all the plants that grow in the world, corn is the most adapted to human food needs, and adapting it for fuel needs ignores many other fuel plants that would be far better.

[jwirr]

2. There are many aspects to this issue. First it is all about land use

policy. If we use land to grow fuel we are not using it to grow food which produces the expected rise in food costs. We need to find a crop that will grow on marginal land not used for food and use that for fuel. We need to see that we are not sacrificing wooded acreage as we grow fuel. All of this has to balance out. We also need to make sure that the farmer of good food producing land does not suffer economically because he/she does not produce fuel over food.

[Recursion]

3. Hunger is not and has never been about food scarcity

Even in the worst times, there has always been more than enough food in the world, and even in each individual country. The problem always is one of finding a political and economic way to *get* food to hungry poor people. Supply-oriented views of hunger always miss this point.