Rising Food Prices? Let Them Eat Biofuel

Who could have predicted that 21st century cutting-edge technology designed to improve lives would, instead, contribute to starvation. According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), “the increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming in the world”; yet more and more agricultural land is being turned over to the production of crops used to manufacture biofuels, such as ethanol.

The search for renewable and environmentally-friendly energy resources by developed nations seeking independency from dwindling petroleum reserves is understandable. But it comes at a cost that may be too great to bear for the world’s poorest, who are suffering from a scarcity of affordable staples.
At the forefront of the biofuel drive is the United States, which, last year, used 25 percent of its maize and corn crops to produce ethanol, and, thus, had to reduce exports to established buyers. Western Europe is going in a similar direction, which will result in a scarcity of edible produce and much higher prices. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s Senior Commodities Editor Kona Haque confirms that countries are earmarking increasing acreages to make biofuels, a trend that will not only increase inflationary pressure on grain prices but also on meat and poultry as livestock feed gets more expensive. High oil prices are also a contributory factor as they have led to a phenomenal rise in the cost of essential fertilizers.

Britain’s Conservative Party leader David Cameron isn’t convinced that ethanol is the way forward. “You could feed a person for a whole year from the grain that produces just one tank of fuel for a sports utility vehicle,” he recently told a gathering of British farmers. “They are not a panacea,” he said. “Unless they are sustainable, they may well harm the environment more than protect it”.

The ethics of pursuing biofuel in a world that is threatened by massive flooding caused by climate change — if we are to believe the doom and gloom merchants — are questionable, and presents a dilemma to government strategists. The chasm between the haves and have-nots is broadening so can it be right for developed nations to deny those less fortunate a right to life itself just so their fat-cat citizens can fill their gas-guzzling tanks?

Setting aside the moral issue, there is also a political argument. Hungry people, who feel they have little to lose, will topple governments and turn to more extremist leaderships that would be incompatible with the West as allies. We’ve heard about water wars. We may be looking instead at food wars.

Arab News