Food crisis: Is Lanka sitting on a volcano?

It is said that without subsidies there would be no free market demand for biofuel. Ethanol contains 30% less energy than gasoline; so that new ethanol blended fuels reduce gas mileage, increase engine maintenance cost and lower engine reliability. People are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states. Biofuel production harms environment by needlessly eroding topsoil and encouraging the destruction of forests.

Biofuel production speeds up global warming because the entire production process releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while destroying native forests. Journal Science confirms this, the production of biofuels from grains and switch grass greatly increases the release of greenhouse gases, nearly doubling emission in 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years, and is far worse than using gasoline.

What a crime! Corn produced at large expense of fossil energy is then transformed, with even more fossil energy into pure ethanol.

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On the face of it Sri Lanka does not face a food shortage in the short run, provided an alternative is found for animal food. However, that does not mean that every thing is in order. The biggest problem is the low productivity of paddy. As the population grows, we need more land for housing and roads. Cultivated areas will shrink. Hence, the solution is increasing productivity.

To increase the productivity of paddy more, petroleum based inputs have to be utilized. In a scenario of drastically rising price of oil, this achievement is questionable. If we were to maintain the existing level of production we may have to spend lot more for imported inputs, as practically our entire agriculture and industry are oil intensive. Urgent policy intervention is that we may have to look for more indigenous low import intensive inputs for agriculture, if we were to get out of these shackles.

The world food crisis affects Sri Lanka in a different footing. It is inevitable that this oil and food crises eventually results in a world recession, as it happened in mid 1970s and 1980s. This time rise in the price of oil was so dramatic that the ensuing recession would be worse than those two. Such a recession can create devastating effects on our economy. More than fifty percent of our GDP is externally contributed.

Sunday Times of Sri Lanka