Gwynne Dyer: Biofuel mania ends days of cheap food

[George.com]

dumb, plain dumb! Is your president thick? This issues suggests so. FFS, it boggles the imagination. Bush wants to wean the US off foreign oil so he instead starts refining biofuels from corn. Nowt wrong with bio-fuels, using good food crop to do it is dumb. In his actions he sets off a mini commodity boom. Maybe concentrate on energy efficiency and lower reliance on overseas oil that way?

Interestingly here in NZ, where we get Dyers column syndicated in my local newspaper, our dairy famers are experience a boom in prices. Several factors to that, one I understand is the increased price of corn & wheat that is being diverted to make fuel. Our milk production costs are not necessarily rising as a result, much of the production is pastoral with cows 365 grazing paddocks. Our farmers are certainly benefitting from the high prices mind. Pork & chicken farmers & beer brewers are a little pissed though as prices of wheat go up. We grow a % of our own needs & import some from Australia. With wheat been sucked up for bio-fuels the price goes up & so does demand. It is also likely more farms will be converted to dairy, given the high milk prices, & some of the existing wheat production will be siphoned off for supplementary feed for cows.

rob

[Charlie]

It's not just me, or crazy USians.. Seems some folks in New Zealand think the same. Keep expanding those gardens.

Charlie

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Full article at:

excerpt:

The era of cheap food is over. The price of maize has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 per cent in one year, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour - used in making the staple food of the poor, tortillas - went up fourfold.

Even in the developed countries food prices are going up, and they are not going to come down again. Cheap food lasted for only 50 years.

[William Wagner]

Perhaps worth a look.

Bill

[rachael simpson]

funny.............the market price of corn has gone down, but the local price of soybeans has sky-rocketed to 9.06 a bushel. Local farmers have been hauling beans like crazy the last couple of days.

[rachael simpson]

hey,

thanks for that link, checked them out and signed up........

rae

[Persephone]

Whoa, podner...the price of corn/maize has zoomed because of the misbegotten "plan" to grow corn for biofuel. Totally ridiculous, when an ancient plant like hemp that can grow on the worst ground and reseeds itself, would do the same only much cheaper. Hemp has been used since antiquity for everything from sails to clothing to oil to...endless socially important applications.

The US is the only Puritanical country that bows to the hysteria of the uninformed about hemp's cousin, marijuana. Just try getting high on hemp; you'll collapse from exhaustion first.

Of course the result has been to send corn prices sky high in places like Mexico, where it is the staple food in the form of tortillas.

But the U.S. corn-producing states, their lobbiespaying off Congress big-time, are laughing all the way to the bank.

Tfui!

Persephone

[Charlie]

No disagreements with ya at all.

Here's an article about another lower-cost alternative to feed crops for ethanol production.

Charlie

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Milk Costs More Than Gas

Excerpt:

American ethanol is made from corn, and the more corn we use to feed our cars, the more expensive is the corn left over for our livestock. Ergo, ?No Milk Today.?

If ethanol we must have, we could import it from Brazil, where they can make it cheaper from sugar cane than Americans can make it from corn. But Brazilian ethanol, thanks to the agribusiness lobby and a

54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, is kept out of the country.

Politicians of both parties, mad for winning elections in corn-growing Iowa, do not mention the cheaper Brazilian stuff. Their silence on lesser-cost alternative ethanol sources may help them please Midwestern agribusiness interests and just about nobody else.

[Omelet]

There is also nothing stopping us from growing more sugar cane here instead of wasting grain crops on biofuel. There are many sugar can fields in Louisiana.

Biofuel can be made from waste straw and weeds. Why the hell are we wasting food crops on it?

[Omelet]

Is that a rhetorical question? ;-)

And make loads of money for his cohorts.

Pasture-ize the cows. Do they really need grain?

[Charlie]

Because of SOBs, rich farmers, like two that I personally know, that have plenty of money to contribute to our US Rep, and get an ethanol plant built within our district.

Money talks and bullshit walks.

Course you knew that.

Charlie

[rachael simpson]

Amen! choir here...........

rae

[Charlie]

That is one of the more charitable descriptions that I have heard! ;-)

FB Charlie

[William Wagner]

And when I saw amerika you know it blew my mind.

Try finding that a line from a tune from 1969 +- 2.

Eric Burdon I thought however no luck yet.

Bill who thinks of musicians and actors as our spokespeople. Some stink some do not.

[rachael simpson]

that was a good dozen years before my time, but i'll see if i can help you find it.............. rae

[Omelet]

Indeed... :-(

[Omelet]

[Pan Ohco]

And I think of actors and musicians, as people hired to entertain me, that's all, why would they think that they speak for me.

[rachael simpson]

i can't turn up anything either. are you sure that's the exact lyric/phrase?

[Charlie]

You're listening to the wrong music then, friend.

And missing some good philosophy.

Chillout Charlie

[William Wagner]

Thanks for the effort. Perhaps Just "You know it blew my mind."

Bill