Lester Brown: Higher food prices are here to stay

As the world’s need for grain soars, America’s misguided attempt to wean itself off oil is exacerbating the food crisis

…In a misguided attempt to reduce its oil insecurity, the US is creating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before. Even if the entire US grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still only supply 18% of the US’s automotive fuel needs at most. At the individual level, the grain required to fill a SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol would feed one person for an entire year.

Ethanol, which is projected to consume over one-fourth of the US grain crop in 2008, will supply scarcely 5% of the US’s automotive fuel needs. But this demand for grain is the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back.


With the growing capacity to convert food into fuel, the price of grain is now tied directly to the price of oil. If the food value of a grain is less than its fuel value, the market will convert the grain into fuel. As oil jumped from $60 to $100 a barrel, the price of grain followed it upward. If oil goes to $200 a barrel, grain prices will also keep climbing.

On the supply side, farmers are faced with spreading water shortages, a scarcity of new cropland to plow and the ongoing loss of cropland to residential construction, industrial construction and the paving of land.

The world’s total irrigated area stopped growing in 2000. We may have reached peak water before peak oil. It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain, but water tables are now falling and wells are going dry in countries that contain half the world’s people, including China and India, two of the largest grain producers.

Guardian