Earth Policy Institute: Lester Brown on Food-Based Fuels
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07.14.06
Lester Brown (see our TreeHuggerTV interview), founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 2.0, has just released a new analysis on the dangers of using grain to make fuel. "The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people." Granted, the ethanol debate can be hard to follow; many interested parties have claimed that ethanol is good or bad, energy positive or negative. Some very credible sources see a bright future for the aloholic biofuel, though not necessarily via food crops, and biodiesel generally has less detractors. But regardless of the potential of biofuels as fuel, we also need to deal with the potential problems caused by using food to make them.
Back to Lester brown:
"Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United States, leaving only 6 million tons to satisfy the world’s growing food needs. [...]The amount of corn used in U.S. ethanol distilleries has tripled in five years, jumping from 18 million tons in 2001 to an estimated 55 million tons from the 2006 crop. [...] In Iowa, a staggering 55 ethanol plants are operating or have been proposed. [...] The profitability of crop-based fuel production has created an investment juggernaut.
But here's the main problem, the basis for the food vs. fuel competition:
As the price of oil climbs, it becomes increasingly profitable to convert farm commodities into automotive fuel, either ethanol or biodiesel. In effect, the price of oil becomes the support price for food commodities. Whenever the food value of a commodity drops below its fuel value, the market will convert it into fuel.
What that means is that climbing oil prices (it recently hit $78/barrel, and I suspect that people who will read this post in our archives in a few years will think that was the good old days) also make the price of food increase, not only because of higher transportation and fertilizer costs, but because the demand for grain to produce fuel will rise in parallel. It's a double whammy.
Here's what needs to be avoided:
Simply put, the stage is being set for a head-on collision between the world’s 800 million affluent automobile owners and food consumers. Given the insatiable appetite of cars for fuel, higher grain prices appear inevitable. The only question is when food prices will rise and by how much. Indeed, in recent months, wheat and corn prices have risen by one fifth.For the 2 billion poorest people in the world, many of whom spend half or more of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life threatening. The broader risk is that rising food prices could spread hunger and generate political instability in low-income countries that import grain, such as Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Mexico. This instability could in turn disrupt global economic progress.
What to do? The Earth Policy Institute has this suggestion which makes a lot of sense to us (at least to mitigate the immediate effects and gain enough time to implement deeper changes to our society - we need to go much further than just efficiency gains, we need to redesign the human systems around us so that they are not on a collision course with nature anymore):
There are alternatives to using food-based fuels. For example, the equivalent of the 3 percent gain in automotive fuel supplies from ethanol could be achieved several times over—and at a fraction of the cost—simply by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20 percent. Investing in public transport could reduce overall dependence on cars.There are other fuel options as well. While there are no alternatives to food for people, there is an alternative source of fuel for cars, one that involves shifting to highly efficient gas-electric hybrid plug-ins. This would enable motorists to do short-distance driving, such as the daily commute, with electricity. If wind-rich countries such as the United States, China, and those in Europe invest heavily in wind farms to feed cheap electricity into the grid, cars could run primarily on wind energy, and at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon.
To which we'd add biofuels made from waste biomass/cellulose. Normally, food-based ethanol would be just a temporary measure while that technology is perfected and deployed, but the danger is that a strong farmers lobby will delay and stop that progression for profit motives.
We highly recommend that you read the whole thing here and explore the Earth Policy Institute's website. See also: ::Grain-Based Ethanol Risk Hinges On Supply Projections, ::Shell Draws A Bright Line: No Food For Fuel
Everyone who has looked into it knows fuel from corn is a bad idea.
There are so many other sources of feedstock for ethanol, organic waste, switchgrass etc.
While I don't know if biofuels are going to be the right way to go in order to replace the oil regime, there's a completely different topic that I feel is being ignored in this debate.
Many well-respected researchers, chiefly among them Francis Lappe, have been saying since the 1970s that starvation and chronic hunger aren't a production problem. We have enough food to feed everyone already.
The problem is that not enough people are getting that food. We shouldn't be worried about how much more food is grown when we talk about feeding the hungry, we should be worried about why those people aren't getting the food that is already available for them.
The “green revolution” was to end hunger by creating a massive production increase that would allow everyone to be fed. Indeed, the green revolution has created a surplus of crops, and today every person on the planet could have thirty-five hundred calories a day just from the world’s grain supplies. There is enough food for approximately 4.3 pounds of general food per person per day: 2.5 pounds of grain, beans, and nuts, a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk, and eggs (Lappé 1999a: 10). However, there are still 800 million people suffering from hunger in the world (Lappé 1999a: 4). This is due, in large part, to a number of problems with the methods that were spawned from the green revolution and from a devastatingly backwards food aid system. Most countries with high percentages of hungry people still produce enough to feed everyone, yet many of these ‘hungry countries’ actually export quite a bit of their food (Lappé 1999a: 11).
Lappé, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza
1999 Beyond Guilt and Fear from The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful World, Douglas Boucher. Pp. 4-60. Food First Books. Oakland, CA.
And more suggested reading:
The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful World, Douglas Boucher. Food First Books. Oakland, CA.
From Columbus to Con Agra: the Globalization of Agriculture and Food. University of Kansas Press. Lawrence, Kansas
Goldschmidt, Walter
1978 As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social
Consequences of Agribusiness.
Grey, Mark A.
2000 The Industrial Food Stream and its Alternatives in the United States: An
Introduction. Human Organization. Vol. 59, No. 2. Pp. 143-150.
Yup. And here in the EU our farmers get paid to produce food that no one will eat. This also helps them lower their prices putting farmers in poorer countries out of business.
This is why I think bio fuels will be good on two levels, replacing some of the oil we use and giving an income to some of the poorer countries in the world.
A large algae farm could be set up at a much lower cost in africa than it could in north america or western europe.
Why not shift to additional sources of fuel(s) to cover our insatiable demand to drive our cars/mobility...why not encourage the use of hydrogen power...kind of along the lines of the in vogue Hybrids from Toyota and other manufacturers.
The folks who worry so much about using corn might look into the Stillage that is left after the ethanol is made. It is high in protein and would make great hush puppies. We just need to start using the stuff for food. Cattle love it.
The leftovers from Lester's tankful would feed him for a year and he wouldn't even get too fat.