THE COST OF FARMING FUEL IS FOOD

World food prices are rising. The possibility of food shortages is increasingly real. Many factors contribute. The main cause: Food crops are going to agrofuels.

Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups distinguish between biofuels and agrofuels. Agrofuels are fuels made from food crops. Biofuels are fuels made from nonfood biomass like switchgrass and animal waste and biosources like algae. Biofuels might be a good idea. Agrofuels do more harm than good.

Do agrofuels at least help with global climate change? From the International Herald Tribune (IHT): “Two recent studies…suggested that a large-scale effort across the world to grow crops for biofuels would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere rather than reduce it.”

Yet the U.S. and other governments pander to powerful agro-industrial interests by subsidizing crop-to-fuel programs.

The term “Mathusian” is a reminder this is not the first time it has seemed population might overgrow food supply. But this time is different. In the past, food demand drove growers to supply food to the market. Now, fuel demand and agrofuels profits are trumping food demand by doubling profits in the fuels market.

Growers are subsidized by government incentives to supply agrofuels in the name of national security. That is one source of increased revenue to the fuels crop growers. When competition between food and fuels drives crop prices up, the growers sell at unprecedentedly high prices, upping their revenues a second time.

There are solutions. From the IHT editorial: “…the United States and other wealthy countries that are driving this problem must ensure that the United Nations and other relief agencies get the support they need to feed the most vulnerable people. But…The U.S. Congress and the governments of other developed countries must take a hard look at the effect of corn ethanol on food supplies. They must move toward ending subsidies that will become even more difficult to justify as oil prices rise and the costs of producing corn ethanol decline. They must do it before hunger turns to mass starvation.”

First: Corn ethanol does little to ease global climate change concerns. (graph via Grist - click to enlarge)

The high price of diverting food into energy
Editorial, March 3, 2008 (International Herald Tribune)

WHO
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), World Food Program (WFP), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Second: Energy production from grain crops is not worth the harm they do and probably never will be.

WHAT
As more crops go to agrofuels, food prices rise and the threat of famine in poor populations looms.

WHEN
- 2006: 14% of the U.S. corn crop was used for ethanol.
- 2010: 30% of the U.S. corn crop is expected to go to ethanol.
- UNFAO: The price of wheat jumped 80% in the last year.
- UNFAO: World cereal stocks are at their lowest since 1982.

Third: Every region of the U.S. (and of the world), there are nonfood grasses that will soon make excellent cellulosic ethanol crops with much less water use, fertilizer use and crop land use. So why subsidize a few giant Midwestern agribusinesses? (click to enlarge)

WHERE
- Demand for fuel, any and every kind of fuel including agrofuel, in China and India is unprecedented and not expected to remit.
- Increased meat consumption by growing middle classes in China and India means increased demand and upward price pressures on grains.

WHY
- The cost of cereal imports in the neediest countries is expected to grow by 1/3 for the 2nd consecutive year.
- WFP feeds as many as 73 million but, due to rising costs, may have to cut the number it feeds or the amount per person.
- OECD: The U.S., Canada and the EU would need at least 30% and possibly as much as 70% of their combined food crops to supply 10% of their transportation fuels.

Fourth: In hungry 3rd-world countries, it's not that funny. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
IHT: “The human costs of this diversion of food into energy are all too evident.”
from Rainforest Action Network. (click to enlarge)