The last twelve months have seen massive rises in the prices of staple cereals and grains culminating in the spectre of widespread famine. For the billions who already spend more than half their income on food, the price rises spell malnutrition at best, and eventual starvation. The world's big food producers are banning exports, governments are exhausting precious reserves to subsidize food prices, armed guards protect food warehouses, and protests and food riots are breaking out everywhere.
The production of bio-fuels is not solely responsible for these price rises, but it has been a major factor. Things can only get worse if present expansion plans continue. The evidence against bio-fuels is now overwhelming. What seemed like a good idea has proved to be a disaster. It is time to admit it was all a mistake and dismantle the infrastructure.
All the touted benefits of bio-fuels have failed to materialize:
- It was never environmentally significant to begin with. It might be clean burning, but its contribution to air quality will be negligible.
- At best it can be argued that it is carbon neutral. Carbon is fixed from the air in ethanol production and released on burning. But this ignores the fact that energy is used in its manufacture. And the fact that ethanol does not burn as efficiently as gasolene, results in more carbon exhaust per mile driven.
- The only way to make up for the lost food production capacity is to cultivate more marginal lands and destroy more rainforest. There is already powerful evidence of these disastrous environmental consequences. Poor farmers world wide are abandoning food production to supply the more lucrative bio-fuel market, and rainforest destruction is accelerating. The latter tips the carbon equation further in the negative.
- That leaves energy independence. But even if present plans to boost production are realized, the overall impact on fuel supplies will not be significant.
- Economically the initiative is a dead set loser. Ethanol is heavily subsidized and the need for subsidies is likely to continue indefinitely. Now add to that the costs of increased emergency food aid to poor countries like Haiti. Better to invest the money in solar, wind and nuclear power.
At the end of the day the only beneficiaries of the whole sorry mess are America's over subsidized, and mostly wealthy farmers, and the politicians they control. One United Nations envoy called it a "crime against humanity". Make no mistake. We are party to this crime so long as we allow these criminals to get away with what is, literally, mass murder.
There are two other factors driving food price rises. One is adverse weather conditions. The devastating drought which destroyed Australia's wheat crop may well be a hint of things to come. The threat of climate change is no longer something Americans can ignore.
The other major factor in the price rise equation is increased meat consumption. The Indians and the Chinese have not dramatically increased their caloric intake. But they are eating more and more meat. That means calories which were feeding people have been diverted to livestock. It takes four times the calories to feed a meat eater. If Americans drastically reduced their animal food intake, it would free up enough grain to feed more than half a billion people. If China and India forego increased meat consumption as well, the crisis would be well and truly over. One year ago meat eating was simply a luxury the planet could not afford. Now it will directly cost millions of lives. And condemn hundreds of millions to the devastating physical and mental effects of malnutrition.
