Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.20.08
The New York Times covers the food vs fuel debate. "This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food."
Poor people may be able to grow their own staple foods, but they have to buy oil, and the price is skyrocketing with demand, up 70% last year. And of course, "Farmers and plantation companies are responding to the higher prices, clearing hundreds of thousands of acres of tropical forest to replant with rows of oil palms." ::New York Times
Read Treehugger on A Rainforest in your Shopping , Southeast Asia Paying High Environmental Cost For Palm Oil, UN says Palm Oil Industry is Wiping out the Orang Utan Everything connects: How getting rid of trans-fats kills orangutans, Indonesia Fastest Forest Destroyer
And just as vegetable oil prices' surging because of biofuel production serves as the latest reminder of the food-environment-energy connection, developed countries continue to increase biofuel output. Even as the EU has sought recently to tighten production goals for biofuel production, industry can still profit from it - and so it is. The same is occurring in the U.S., where even some farm states in the "heartland" are starting to discourage blanket policies that support biofuel production from corn and other starches.
Until we start basing biofuel production on more sound and geographic- and input-based policies, this situation will only continue to get worse.
-GreenOx
www.greenox.blogspot.com
Needless to say, it is important to distinguish between biofuel production (which is feedstock neutral) and agricultural practice (which is the real problem). Like bird kills for the wind industry, rising food prices is yet another decoy detractors will use to distract the public from the real issues.
Not so sure about the ethanol industry, but in biodiesel the feedstock (vegetable oil) is typically the by-product of meal-production. Shouldn't the over-production of soybean oil, if anything, be driving soybean meal prices (and hence food prices) down?
Luc