I need to do some research on this for work reasons, and am pulling up a lot of information, but wanted to hear what Dopers have to say on this subject. As a little background, the World Food Prize, dedicated to researching ways to end hunger is located here in Des Moines, which is also smack in the middle of producing and promoting biofuels. I am hearing a lot of blame for food shortages and price increases placed on the diversion of corn from food or animal feed production to ethanol production, but bringing that up to people here generates a roll of the eyes and a denial, but not a lot of hard arguments. The only thing I hear when they are pressed for a reason is that the biofuel producers are working on developing fuels from non-food sources, like sawgrass.
I’m open to hearing both sides, with some good cites and hard evidence that I can take into meetings where it will be necessary to either caution management to take a step back from actively promoting biofuels, or establish some solid, well-documented defenses for continuing to promote them. I will say that I am inclined toward the former at the moment, if only because there seems to be a growing perception that biofuel production = famine, and as a non-profit that depends heavily on private funding, we liva or die by what people think of us. FTR, we do not produce biofuels at my place of work, but some of our large donors have involvement with them, so this is a potentially touchy subject.
I wondered this seven months ago, and some were quick to say that more of those crops would be planted and there was no worry of food being in shorter supply. I wonder if that’s still believed. Corn and wheat prices are at record highs, doesn’t that point to supply problems already starting? And in Africa farmers are already planting for biofuel instead of food. It could happen here, too.
If anything, my view six months later is more tipped towards biofuels being unethical.
Regarding this point, even if the new crops are not food sources the switch from food crops to fuel ones leads to a reduction on the supply side of the scale. The way around that issue is to use new lands or methods currently not used for food production.
I´ve heard about interesting developments on fuel production using algae instead of land crops:
Which sounds pretty good, but it doesn´t say wether it uses fresh or salt water, salt water would be much better since currently fresh water supplies are stretched thin while salt water is abundant (now that´s what I call an understatement).
Here´s another interesting article about using sea water ponds to grow algae:
The answer is no. Biofuels are not contributing to world hunger in any significant way…at least not next to things like lack of infrastructure and armed thugs roving various beleaguered countries throughout the world.
I know some of you youngsters may not remember, but hunger in places like Africa (and ‘hunger’ is a bit of an understatement) has been going on longer than even the concept of ‘biofuels’ have been with us. And the reason for that hunger (read starvation) is essentially the same today as it was last year…or a decade ago. A lack of infrastructure to get the food to the folks who need it coupled with thugs with guns who either seize the food for themselves (to eat or sell) or destroy it so others can’t have it.
I’ve read a couple of interesting things this week.
There are currently more people living in a refugee camp in Darfur then were living in the entire Darfur region 30 years ago.
Everyone’s favourite latin american president is calling the US push for corn-based ethanol a crime.
Personally, I think subsidizing corn production to turn it into ethanol is mighty stupid, and a waste of good cropland. But then again, I think all agricultural subsidies and/or price controls are lame, especially in a world with cheap trans-global shipping.
Probably, but it provides an alternative to petroleum; and the rising price of petroleum makes food more expensive to grow and to ship, which contributes to world hunger. There aren’t any perfect solutions here.
My google foo is weak tonight but I remember reading somewhere that the number of people who are overweight world wide now outnumbers the number who have malnutrition. Does anyone have any statistics showing that the percentages of people starving or who have malnutrition due to lack of food has gone up since the demand for biofuels has gone up? All I’m finding is that the absolute percentage is pretty stable vs the increase in world wide population.
On a recent episode of Science Friday, Jeffery Sachs, author of Common Wealth: Economics of a Crowded Planet states a few factors causing higher food prices. Biofuels is one element, another, larger element, has simply been unexpected climate events like drought hitting the Aussies, and the floods/heat waves in Europe.
Mrs. Cake, I doubt that you’ll get the hard numbers that you seek here and I would be surprised if they even exist.
As has been noted the current world food problem is multifactorial. (And btw xtisme is very wrong - this very different from past local famines caused by local supply disruptions like famine and war.) That the sudden increase in demand for biofuels (which at this point diverts from the food supply) plays a factor is indisputable, but how much of one, and if its long term effect is for the better or for the worse, are very much open questions.
Short-term the spiking demand for biofuels has contributed to the demand side over-all. As has a richer China eating more grain-intensive meat.
Supply side in food produciton cannot respond to increased demand instantaneously. New crop plantings take time to grow. Better irrigation takes time to build. Worse, the most potential for increased yields is in the areas most hit by famine where small farms are managed by poorer people who cannot currently afford to invest in more fertilizers, better seeds, and better infrastructure for irrigation etc. And various subsidies and economic policies of many countries have resulted in little of the increased price of food getting to their level.
So clearly we have a short term mismatch between a fairly rapid increase in demand, of which biofuels are a part of, and the ability to ramp up supply side, which is a slower process under any circumstance and for which many small impoverished farmers are ill prepared to do with out help from their governments and the world.
Long-term however increased food production is possible (especially at the level of the small farms in impoverished areas), and biofuel production can be more productive as well - by increasing the amount of biofuel per unit grain, by switching to cellulosic methods which uses that which would be waste in food production and/or dedicated crops that can be much more productive in barely arable areas and that require much less water and fertilizer inputs, and by developing alternative methods like the referenced algael production methods which can also be used to directly capture carbon at power plant flues.
Long term also is the hope that more biofuel use will decrease the potential for worsening climate change that is predicted to worsen food production capacity in many parts of the world (although to be fair it also might increase production is other places like Russia and less so the United States.) And may blunt some of the rapidity in oil price rises that increase the cost of food production as well.
My own take is that corn based biofuels are a bit of a boon to American farmers but cause more harm than good overall. Cellulosic production that uses waste products and dedicated crops on marginal lands (and Iowa has a bunch of that that have recently been taken off of the dole and is reopened for planting now) with minimal inputs makes more sense but even then it seems more intelligent to me to use that biomass for direct energy production by co-firing it in power plants - as Alliant is proposing to do local to you- and more firmly supporting PHEV technology that uses that power more efficiently.
Large biofuel farms may displace women farming marginal lands in poor areas to even more marginal land unless policies succeed in “integrating energy crop plantations into existing local agri-food systems in order to protect smallholder farmers’ traditional agricultural activities, skills and specialized knowledge, which are crucial to the food security and long-term resilience of rural communities.”
Yet biofuels are needed to meet marginal increases in fuel demand. And increased energy costs hurt poor farmers too.
Corn ethanol processing is becoming more efficient.
Great information - thank you all for the answers so far.
DSeid, I had heard something about Alliant’s plan and it is on my list as something to continue looking at. I’m hoping to spend some time at the World Food Prize conferences this year to hear what everyone is saying about this, as I expect it will be a pretty hot topic. Ale, I hadn’t heard about the algae thing - that is very interesting and something else for my look-at list.
So the big issue seems to be diverting land formerly used for growing food-grade crops to growing strains best sold to biofuel companies, and the debate is whether or not this is contributing significantly to the food shortage problem - is that correct? Lots of other subsidiary issues too, of course, but that seems to be the main one that people are likely to want information about, and there are no solid numbers yet. That gives me a place to go, although sadly, whatever the facts are, it will probably come down to perception filtered through the media.
BTW, elfkin477, thank you for the link to your thread. I rememberd seeing one, but I guess my search parameters were lousy since I couldn’t turn it up when I looked.
Well you’ll likely run into people upset over Allinat’s plans as they are new coal fired plants that also co-fire with biomass. People want power but don’t want coal at all and don’t want to pay the price for completely renewable.
The issue is both land and crop. In the US it is corn that could be used for feedstock but instead is used for biofuel. OTOH the US increased its production overall enough to provide for the demand of biofuels … they just did not increase for the increased global demand for foodstock.
Likewise Thailand is actually producing more rice this year (20.4 mill tons compared to 19.6 million tons last year) while also diverting some land to biofuel crops, but that increase was not enough to offset the increased demand in China especially as other regional countries stopped exports out of fear of shortages to come.
The biggest long term threat to global food supplies is that global climate change will devastate production in the poorest areas of the world. Long term intelligent use of biomass (including biofuels) will be part of managing that risk.
Medium term the increased costs of production that result from high oil prices is a major factor which biofuel production may help blunt.
The problem is that rigidly mandating rapid increased use of biofuels has, in a very short term, increased grains demand just when demand was already going up rapidly due to a newly prosperous China. (You may want to compare the volume of grain used for biofuel this year to the increased demand for grain in China for feedstock and for food use … I am quite confident that China’s increased demands dwarves the use for biofuels. The numbers should be available somewhere.) And supply, especially in developing countries, just can’t keep up with that one two punch.
So your trick is to advocate for intelligent use of biomass for energy for the long term fight against hunger while advocating against stupid policies that, together with other forces, force increases in demand far exceeding global ability to increase supply in the short term.
No matter how the media spins it in the short term.
Please let us know what you pick up at the conferences and good luck!
But still there are fears of a shortage in Thailand. Rice prices have been skyrocketing here, and panic-buying has begun. Some places have begun limiting how much rice can be bought at one time.
NPR has some good information also, including another interview with Jeffrey Sachs.
I think biofuels are certainly necessary, but policy makers choose a horrible time to implement it with the increased demand from Asia, and choose some very poor methods of implementation also. They are not doing enough to encourage use of non-edible crops as well.
And its not just biofuels - I just saw a commercial featuring how Ford is using soy-based foam for its vehicles. Its a good sentiment, but I can help think that they are better crops to use for polyurethane, but I would like some more information on that aspect if anyone knows.
What becomes of the slops 9leftovers0 from brewing ethanol from corn? Can’t it be dried and processed into cattle feed? Only about 20% of the sugars in corn get converted into ethanol-so really, is corn for fuel really wasting all of it?
In the 1940s, Ford built a plastic car using hemp. Using hemp as a basis for biofuels makes a helluvalot more sense than food crops. Of course, getting Kongress Kritters to grasp this concept is another matter entirely.
It’s naive to think that we can convert food cropland to biofuel cropland and not see an increase in food prices, or a reduced supply of food. Of course growing fuel crops instead of food crops will increase the cost of food.
All that said, food is still extremely cheap. Anyone in any country with a stable economy has enough access to food to get fat.
Fuel, on the otherhand, is not nearly so cheap. There’s a good argument for letting food prices increase if it will lead to fuel prices decreasing. Biofuels aren’t making more people starve, because starvation has never in recent history been caused by a lack of supply. Starvation is always a logistic/distribution or political problem, and it still is.