Biofuel: the new Holocaust

"The price of agricultural land will be influenced by its potential use for bio-energy. As farmers choose what crop would suit them best, they will change what they produce and hence the whole system of relative prices of agricultural produce. This will imply a very large increase in the demand for agricultural land. Its price and that of the products that use it intensively – such as food and cotton – will go up. By how much? This will depend not only on the cost of bio-energy but also on how much additional land is put to use and the degree to which food crops will be complements or substitutes of bio-energy: they would be substitutes if switch grass were planted instead of soybeans; they will be complements if biofuels are made out of wheat stalk. My bet is that they will tend to be more substitutes than complements and the relative price of food will go up." Ricardo Hausmann (director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development)

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People will have to starve to death so that we can ride in style.

Regular News Links readers know that biofuel is one of my hobby horses. My intuition tells me that this process is part and parcel of the same growing technical perfection that created the possibilty of the Holocaust and the atom bombs that devoured Hiroshima and Nagasaki: a perfection organization and logistics that not only allows us, but invites us to express our darkest natures on a monstrous scale.

The following article by George Monbiot is a masterpiece. DS

Monbiot:The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world - Guardian
Abstract: It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.(...) the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people's mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel, and other people will starve. Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels "might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further". This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis".(...) A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - that is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world's biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use. A paper published in the journal Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels.(...) If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. READ IT ALL

Fearful: food for fuel fools

"The rush for biofuels could harm the world's poorest people" Oxfam

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Using food to power automobiles is the cruelest idea that to have appeared in my lifetime (Hitler had recently left before I arrived).

If Monty Python had used the idea in a sketch 30 years ago, it would have been seen as another amusing example of their outré brand of surrealism. The subject is just begging for the genius of some modern, Jonathan Swift, to eviscerate it with a new "Modest Proposal".

As far as I know, I was the first columnist in Spain to write about it. I caught some flack last spring for occupying precious newspaper space with something so "off story", but when the price of bread went up by 50% in August, my back came in for some patting.

As a journalist the subject offers me endless material for articles. 'Food for Fuel' is even better than 'blood for oil' as a metaphor for describing the callous selfishness of today's global, consumer capitalism.

If you are itching to be an activist. If you are hunting around for a cause to get involved in, something with a "fulcrum effect", where your "widow's mite" could make a difference, fighting biofuel could be it. DS

Biofuel rush harmful, Oxfam warns - BBC News

Abstract: The rush for biofuels could harm the world's poorest people, Oxfam has said.(...) Oxfam warns poor farmers risk being forced off their land as industrial farmers cash in on the biofuel bonanza.(...) The rush by big companies and governments in Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil, Tanzania and Malaysia to win a slice of the "EU biofuel pie" threatens to force poor people from their land, it adds. This could destroy their livelihoods, lead to the exploitation of workers and hit food availability and prices, says the report. It is now demanding the EU reviews its biofuel policy and wants safeguards put in place to protect the poor. The European Commission says it is working to make sure its biofuel policy does not backfire. The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin said there were also fears over the environmental cost of making fuel from crops like maize. Scientists have said it takes so much energy to produce some biofuels that it would be cleaner overall to burn petrol in our cars, he said.(...) "The EU proposals will exacerbate the problem. It is unacceptable that poor people in developing countries should bear the cost of questionable attempts to cut emissions in Europe. READ IT ALL

Uganda drops plan to clear forest for sugar cane plantation - Energy Current
Abstract: Uganda has dropped a project to clear part of the Mabira Forest Reserve to make way for a project to grow sugar cane for ethanol production after a study showed the forest could bring in more than 10 times revenue from eco-tourism than sugar cane production, according to a media report. The Ugandan government previously earmarked 17,500 acres of land from the forest reserve for multinational corporation Mehta Group to plant sugar cane for large-scale production of ethanol. But a study by Nature Uganda shows Uganda stands to lose US$316 million from eco-tourism in destroying the forest, while gaining less than US$20 million from sugar cane production. The Ugandan finance minister, Dr. Ezra Suruma, announced the U-turn at an official dinner. "We have committed ourselves to conserving Mabira Forest," he said. "There is other land in Uganda suitable for sugar cane growing." READ IT ALL

Ethanol Horror story: hogs forced to eat junk food

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Bismark said that is was better for people to not know how sausages were made. Still as true as the day he said it.

This is a story that illustrates the insanity of turning corn into fuel for automobiles and also gives interesting insights into the food industry too.

Does anybody remember the film called "Soylent Green", cause reading this article from the Wall Street Journal, I think we are headed in that direction for sure. DS

With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Junk Food - Wall Street Journal
Abstract: "Pigs can be picky eaters," Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, "they like the sweet stuff." Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren't eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith's main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms' biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, since it can be cheaper. Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. "It's kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs," says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.(...) In Pennsylvania, farmers are turning to candy bars and snack foods because of the many food manufacturers nearby. Hershey Co. sells farmers waste cocoa and the trimmings from wafers that go into its Kit Kat bars. At Nissin Foods, maker of Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, farmers drive to a Lancaster, Pa., factory and load up on scraps of the squiggly dried noodles, which pile up in bins beneath the assembly line. Hiroshi Kika, a senior manager at the company, says the farm business is "very minor" but helps the company's effort to "do anything to recycle." Other businesses called "jobbers" serve as middlemen, buying food that manufacturers would otherwise throw away, like burned or broken cookies, or cereal that contains too much sugar, and selling it to livestock operations.(...) Historically, the livestock industry has consumed 60% of the nation's corn crop. Thanks to the ethanol rush, the price of a bushel of corn for months has hovered around $4 -- nearly double the price of a few years ago. That has prompted livestock groups like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Chicken Council to call for an end to federal ethanol subsidies, including a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit offered to companies that blend gasoline with ethanol. For now, livestock must pay up or make do with alternatives.(...) Mr. Smith says he's paying about $63 to feed a single pig for five or six months before it goes to market -- up 13% from last year. His costs would be even higher if he didn't augment his feed with trail mix, which he says helps him save on average about $8 a ton on feed. This year, Mr. Smith has bought enough trail mix to feed about 5,000 hogs, and that will save him about $40,000. He began feeding his hogs trail mix about a year ago, after Mr. Funderburke told him a local manufacturer was looking to dump surplus mix that was either too salty, sprinkled with cardboard or otherwise unfit for human consumption. Mr. Smith recently got a truckload of chocolate chips and his pigs seem to like them. "I've heard no complaints," he says.(...) Dwight Hess, a cattle feedlot operator in Marietta, Pa., is located in the heart of snack country, near Hershey and Herr Foods Inc., a maker of potato chips, pretzels and snack mixes. His cattle ration consists of about 17% "candy meal," a blend of chocolate bars and large chunks of chocolate; 3% of what he calls "party mix," a blend of popcorn, pretzels, potato chips and cheese curls; 8% corn gluten; and the remainder corn and barley he grows. He says the byproducts save him about 10% on feed costs. Still, it costs him about 65 cents to put a pound on a steer, up from 42 cents last year. Near the Snake River in Idaho, Cevin Jones of Intermountain Beef is struggling to feed his 12,000 cattle in light of higher feed costs. Traditionally, he has used up to 30% corn or other grains in his feed mix. This year he's using 100% byproducts, including french fries, Tater Tots and potato peels. "It's kind of funny," Mr. Jones says, "every once in a while, you can spot a couple of cattle fighting over a whole potato." READ IT ALL

Easter Parade - Ethanol Photo Show

The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. - Foreign Affairs Magazine

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I thought the previous post on ethanol needed a bit more graphic support. With a little massaging, Google Images coughs up its wonders. DS

Ethanol... rough as a cob

Ailing leader Fidel Castro returned to the public debate — if not view — for the second time in less than a week with a column in the Communist Party newspaper denouncing U.S. promotion of using food crops for biofuels. Castro chided the Bush administration for its support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move that the 80-year-old leader said would leave the world's poor hungry. - International Herald Tribune

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The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. - Foreign Affairs Magazine

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My question after reading this material is why, when some ayatollah calls Bush a "Great Satan" do people call the ayatollah an extremist, a radical or a nut? I have no idea who is keeping score on this, but what does a person have to do to be considered officially evil or a "Satan"? Starting a war that kills hundreds of thousands of people and may finally lead to the death of millions isn't enough? Now it turns out he wants to starve 2.7 billion desperately poor people living on less than two bucks a day, just so some shopaholic who looks like the back end of a sumo wrestler can fill the tank of his SUV.

The "Last Days" crowd are hunting all over for the "Anti-Christ"... Looks like they already voted for him. DS

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor - Foreign Affairs
Abstract: The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2005, global ethanol production was 9.66 billion gallons, of which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons. The industry's growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer. The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops. This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security. READ IT ALL