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Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide
hereisnowhy writes "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel. Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol — whether from corn, beets, wheat, or other crops — requires more energy than can be derived from the product."
remove the sugar tariff and then you will see big changes.
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Well, that's what we get for letting hysteria and politics shout down environmental science. And many of the more strident environmental groups have no one but themselves to blame - they embraced the politics and hysteria because (in the short term) it furthered their agendas. Politicians and the corporations (including big agriculture) that bribe^H^H^H^H^H contribute heavily to their campaigns are far from stupid, however, and will twist things to their advantage. The corporations make money and "be green", and the politicians can sucker voters by "being green" and both laugh all the way to the bank. My favorite one was how DuPont got all green over Freon - because they owned the patents on non-CFC-based refrigerants that would replace it. Nice of "t3h world is going to end!!!1!!" crowd to get the government to force everyone to replace their patent-expired Freon with something much more profitable, never mind that this raised the cost of refrigeration and decreased the quality of food supplies in poorer countries.
In the long run, the most outspoken members cause the rest of the environmentalist community lose credibility (because the world doesn't end), and the politicians will just look for the next sucker cause to exploit. Too bad for the environment.
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Anything that raises the price of food means portions will need to be reduced, and farmers will be more likely to be able to support themselves by growing crops.
In the US, sure, this could possibly lead to smaller portions, but what about people in other countries that don't have enough to eat to begin with? The price of torilla's rising 50% in Mexico doesn't mean "smaller portions" it means NO portions.
"A permanent moratorium on growing plants in soil as a biofuel feedstock is what we need."
And the alternative is....?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel.
No shit. Ethanol releases carbon dioxide while it burns, too. However, its carbon dioxide was already in the atmosphere, absorbed by the plants, then released again when burnt. That makes it carbon neutral*, even though the emissions are the same.
Or, did they mean to take that into account? Who knows, the article is incomplete or misleading.
* I'm talking about the carbon in the plant, not carbon used in production. That's next.
Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol -- whether from corn, beets, wheat or other crops -- takes more energy than is derived from the product.
No shit. Unless it violates certain laws of thermodynamics, of course the energy derived is less than the energy required to produce. But they don't talk about where that energy comes from. Maybe it's all from the sun, or from other renewal resources. Do they mean that the same amount of net fossil-fuel based carbon is released? Who knows, the article is incomplete or misleading.
Re: Food prices
The US subsidizes farmers who grow corn, because corn prices have been historically too low to support production. Now, corn prices are higher, and we're complaining about what it does to food costs? How about we take away the subsidies - clearly no longer needed - and give the money to food programs. Then, we look into the side effects of corn being the majority of all American's diets. See some of the repercussions in the recent documentary King Corn. Maybe we could find something else that could substitute for corn in some foods. Like, say, sugar, if we'd remove our tariffs. (Hey, if folks from other countries could sell their sugar to the US for food, they'd have more money to buy our more-expensive corn.) Then, maybe we could find something better than corn to use for ethanol. Like, say, hemp or switchgrass. I'm sure if corn gets too expensive, some entrepreneur out there will start looking for alternatives.
But all of that would be constructive work toward making our planet a better place. It's far better to rant and rave and use single points of change as excuses to throw up our hands and give up.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Ask yourself, "Why is the price so high?"
In EVERY case of people starving on this Planet in this day and age is because of failed states. Period. Africa's food problems? Just look at their governments and how they appropriate food for their armies and buddies of the "President" (read Dictator). Sorry, the only food and starvation problems today are Government made. And no, I DO NOT mean some "evil corporation in their corporation offices being all corporaty" causing the problem. That reason is a smokescreen.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
One option is hydroponics. The most promising crop is algae. A study done at Sandia said some years ago that growing algae in foot-deep concrete "raceway" ponds (a circular stream) agitated by paddlewheels suggested that it should be economical before diesel fuel hit $3/gallon.
Another option is to only make the fuel out of waste oils and cellulose. Biodiesel can be made out of waste animal fat, but honestly that can only provide a small portion of the demand. Tyson Foods is currently engaging in a trial in Ireland with ConocoPhilips. Cellulosic biodiesel is rapidly approaching as a viable technology.
You could also ignore the possibilities of biodiesel and go straight to butanol. Butanol is made by bacteria in the "ABE" process, in which a specific organism originally isolated as an aid to making TNT can be used to make fuel. ABE stands for Acetone, Butanol, and Ethanol. All three of these things can be burned in an ordinary gasoline engine, but Butanol is the most interesting compound in this regard as it is a direct one-to-one replacement for gasoline. The ABE process can be used on any organic matter.
You could go all-electric, which would require building more nuclear plants, and building breeder reactors to supply them with fuel. Using the proper types of reactors prevents the use of the systems to produce weapons-grade materials; all breeders are not the same (no pun intended.) But this would be in many ways a more major undertaking than the other options because the infrastructure to transport and dispense biodiesel or butanol already exists - precisely the same means used to transport diesel and gasoline, respectively.
Ultimately, the answer can only be a combination of these and other ideas. But it's easy to see that topsoil-based fuels are utterly and completely wrongheaded. They deplete soil, techniques used in mass-farming create hardpan and reduce diversity in soil, killing off the majority of organisms found there, and so on. Everything about modern farming techniques is wrong! It's simply not a sustainable activity on its own. Depending on it for fuel will cause a crisis rapidly. Certain parts of the world cannot feed themselves today because of their agricultural activities in the past. The Amazon is approaching a crisis state in which it can no longer support itself and it collapses entirely - eliminating the source of some 25% of the planet's oxygen.
If we don't get a grip on agriculture now, it will all be a moot point soon, because we won't have oxygen to breathe.
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The sooner cars go electric and we can consolidate our energy sources at the power plant, the better, because it's much easier to make a power plant clean, than to make an internal combustion engine clean. The only thing holding us back is the pitiful state of the Battery. If we spent half the money on battery research that we did trying to make cars run on food, we'd be running silent, emissionless cars before we even ran out of oil.
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I'd like to point out that corn produces 400 gallons of ethanol per acre, while switch grass produces 2300 gallons per acre (and that yield will increase as cellulose production methods are improved.) It's time we stop subsidizing specific crop farming, and look at farming as a whole.
Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't most third world countries depend on agriculture products as exports? So if agriculture products become more expensive, the food they buy is more expensive, but they will also have more money with which they can buy the expensive food.
If a farmer gets 100% of his income from agriculture, and 90% of his expenses are from buying agriculture products, he will still make a bit more profit if the market for agriculture products go up.
Anyway, this is all pointless, because in the end even the poorest country with the most infertile soil will have enough food for everyone if its a well run democracy that actually has a policy to bring food to everyone. If it isnt, well, then people might starve even if the country has both the money and soil to get food.
Conservation alone isn't a replacement for burning fossil fuels. Sure, it's a good idea for many reasons, but the fact remains that we need a source of energy that can maintain and improve our standard of living.
Environmentalists argue that high standard of living and technological progress is mutually exclusive with good stewardship of the earth. They will never be taken seriously by enough people to make a difference until they abandon their pessimistic ludditism.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Perhaps food companies should stop putting that crap in everything that they make. Just a thought. 2 birds with one stone. Obesity problems are likely to go down too.
The Farm Bill subsidizes 5 commodity products, one of which is corn. This bill has far-reaching consequences, which include starvation of population in Africa (by subsidizing farmers the US competes with the 3rd world countries, who cannot compete at that level with a super-industrialized nation that only needs 1% of its citizens to work as farmers and even then it produces enough food products to feed a quarter of the planet.) Now, should the US politicians care about this or should they only work to make the US farmers happy, that is a different question. I am not a US politician or a US citizen, but I understand why a US politician would rather make a US citizen-farmer happy than think about far-reaching consequences to other countries. Other countries do not vote for this US politician, that's probably the most important point to remember.
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I'm sick of seeing links related to Paztek's paper. It's junk. Here's a link to the source that several other articles quote from: http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/patzek/CRPS41 6-Patzek-Web.pdf
I agree with his bashing of corn production in the US (government subsidies, etc).
But on the input side of his energy calculations, he includes:
* human energy (labor),
* energy for the humans to commute to the field,
* energy used to make hybrid seeds,
* solar energy that the field receives!
Let me reiterate that last one. He adds solar energy, the entire amount of energy in the form of sunlight that fell on the plot of land during the growing season, as an input. That means that photosynthesis is part of his efficiency calculation.
He completely discounts the energy that could be gained from the byproducts, and includes energy costs associated with transportation and disposal of the byproducts as if they were waste. Plus, many of the energy inputs he calculates are based on corn destined for human consumption -- many of these inputs would be left out of corn grown for ethanol.
He claims that more CO2 is produced by the ethanol cycle than would be produced by burning the equivalent amount of gasoline. BUT, he doesn't discount the CO2 consumed by the corn plants!
To be fair, maybe this analysis is complete and accurate. If so, I would like to see the same analysis performed on gasoline -- and please include all the solar energy that went into the biomass that eventually became petroleum, include the energy from heat and pressure from the earth, etc etc.
Then one could make a fair comparison.