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Page added on August 19, 2011
Burning up food prices: More corn going to ethanol production now than food production
The world has a food shortage. This isn’t speculative or subjective, and it’s not fear-mongering or alarmist. It’s a well-documented fact and, what’s more, the real experts – those who aren’t influenced by government or corporate interests – have been trying to make that case for months.
Moreover, these same experts say, the shortages are causing global food prices to rise – dramatically in some cases – which is only leading to more hunger, more pain and more hardship.
So, what is the United States doing to blunt the effects of this food shortage? What is official U.S. policy regarding, say, the production of corn – the primary ingredient in scores of food products and livestock feed? Well, officially, our policy is to burn up a substantial amount of corn every year in our automobiles – food that could be used to feed Americans and the world.
“In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars,” says Lester Brown, writing in Foreign Policy magazine in January. “That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest.”
It must be a “West” thing because the Europeans are following a similar policy. Though most cars in Europe run on diesel fuel, “there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil,” writes Brown. That has led to less land being utilized to grow food and the cutting and clearing of rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia, to harvest “fuel” for palm oil plantations.
Some experts say that using more corn in the U.S. isn’t driving up food costs, and it’s not a problem for the global food supply, they insist.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in its most recent Crop Production and Supply/Demand report for this year, said for the first time ever more of the American corn crop will likely wind up in our gas tanks rather than in the bellies of our livestock.
No big deal, says an industry insider.
“Every credible study has clearly found the effect of ethanol policies is negligible on the price of corn,” says Monte Shaw, president of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.
Not so fast, say researchers and economists from Purdue University. According to a report released in July, demand for biofuels (corn=ethanol) in the U.S. is driving up food prices, and that phenomenon isn’t likely to change for at least the next two years.
The study’s authors said that in 2005, about 10 percent of the U.S. corn crop went to ethanol production; by 2010, that climbed to 27 percent. And, since the Obama administration’s official policy is “no new drilling” and alternative energy automobiles are still years away at best, the official policy of burning our food supply will remain for the foreseeable future .
As the world goes hungry and food prices climb, the world’s breadbasket has chosen to burn up enough of a single commodity to feed hundreds of millions of people. That’s a pretty big deal.
6 Comments on "Burning up food prices: More corn going to ethanol production now than food production"
Mike on Fri, 19th Aug 2011 11:56 pm
Of course it’s a “West thing.” It’s always an evil West thing when the do-good whiners open the floodgates of cathartic appeal.
The West consumes too much, the Western consumer is not spending enough. The West produces too much, the West is not producing enough. The West is not helping developing countries, the West is interfering in sovereign affairs. Blah, blah, blah.
Clearly, the West and in particular the United States is responsible for feeding the world. To wit, “So, what is the United States doing to blunt the effects of this food shortage?”
Naturally, once America is forbidden to use its corn as it sees fit, we’ll move on to grain fed to livestock. Oh wait, we’ve already singled that one out. OK. Once we’ve knocked those out, we’ll target grains devoted to beer and spirits production. And then we’ll target pet food. Move over Rover for the never ending demands of the busy-body philanthropist who knows whats best for you and your produce (since he has none).
Maybe, just maybe, local people and regions exposed to famine risk should take care of themselves. Feeding Africa only produces more Africans and larger famines. Human suffering is not reduced, it is amplified.
Localization is coming this century and the transition will not be pretty.
DC on Sat, 20th Aug 2011 1:27 am
Its bad enough that amerika subdidizes corn to such an extent, it undermines food security around the world. Amerika has been flooding 3rd world countries for decades with subsidized corn and other crops, which undermined 3rd world agrictultral self-sufficeny, and indirectly helped entrench the local US backed elites. Then amerika comes along and says, no more cheap food for you, were going to stick it in our SUV’s instead.
Prices rise because all those 3rd world countries that used to be able to feed themselves no longer can. Guess why? All there land is devoted to exotic export crops. And guess where all that food goes, to US(the west) of course. So we can have mangoes year round.
All of this of course, is bad enough on its own. The real kicker of course is that corn ethanol simply does not produce any new ‘net’ energy. Its filler. Every unit of ethanol takes 1 unit of fossil-fuel to produce. A complex shell game designed to enrich king corn in the USofA and to fool the gullible into thinking that suburbia, wall-mart, F-16s and $99 flights to florida can all be run on corn.
Bio-Fools indeed…
pike on Sat, 20th Aug 2011 1:33 am
I agree with you Mike you dont solve a famine feeding it with food aid as the west has done all along. Creating bigger fimines ect…
This tactic is clearly not working it is time too try to bring the human pop back to more normal levels. In the long term a big reduction of pop should benefit every one.
Alan Cain on Sat, 20th Aug 2011 7:45 pm
So, Mike and Pike – whatcha got in mind? Maybe a holocaust? How about using those nukes on famine plagued areas? Two birds with one stone! Get rid of hungry children and use some of those inventoried weapons of mass simplification. I know Boeing and Raytheon need more business.
This American exceptionalism is going to be a real problem quite soon, my lads.
Mike on Sun, 21st Aug 2011 2:45 am
So Alan Cain, whatcha got in mind? How many kilotons of corn should we send to the warlords? How many billions to the potentate? And how will you prevent it from happening – on an ever larger scale – again?
The notion of American exceptionalism has no relevance here. That of exception to nature does. It is the recent phenomena of over-weight and over-emotional humanists that would have us believe that man is exception to nature’s feast and famine.
And what a burden it must be to put on that moral display knowing the truth of it. That fleeting feeling of goodness is small reward knowing that what is really on righteous parade is exaggerated and maladaptive altruism. Of course, the moral peacock neither ventures nor risks anything of his own, certainly nothing dear. Only an opinion for all to hear. So easy it is for the rich to be generous, and even more so with others’ produce.
When the choice becomes – as it may well this century – whether your child starves or another, I imagine you’ll find the tribal Alan.
Kenz300 on Mon, 22nd Aug 2011 1:38 pm
The world adds a billion more people every 12 years. Where will all the food, water, oil and jobs come from to support this ever growing population? This never ending world population growth is not sustainable.