Biofuels Bumping Up Food Costs

Technocrat

Biofuels Bumping Up Food Costs

zogger

Fri Aug 31 16:37:14 -0700 2007

Science.

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Well, the push for biofuels is hitting hard this year. Prices for corn are at record levels from ethanol demand, and the ramifications are spreading up and down and out in the "food chain".

..."The scale of the change is boggling. The Indian government says it wants to plant 35m acres (140,000 sq km) of biofuel crops, Brazil as much as 300m acres (1.2m sq km). Southern Africa is being touted as the future Middle East of biofuels, with as much as 1bn acres (4m sq km) of land ready to be converted to crops such as Jatropha curcas (physic nut), a tough shrub that can be grown on poor land. Indonesia has said it intends to overtake Malaysia and increase its palm oil production from 16m acres (64,000 sq km) now to 65m acres (260,000 sq km) in 2025."..more driving there

ed: I am not as concerned as the article writer, because I know that food will always be a good market, so smaller scale localized market gardening will take over from the land used for food products last year that is now going for biofuels. This is actually an excellent time to contemplate the return of the small scale but diversified family farmer, at least as a part time job. For example, the huge feedlot beef might become more dear because of corn and soybean price increases, but that means the much smaller scale grass fed and marginal-land scrub brush fed beef will be more competitive and more folks will think about running a few head instead of zero.. Home gardening will expand, along with backyard greenhouses, once folks realize they can make folding money in "sweat equity" by cutting down the grocery bills on a patch out in the back yard that they just mow now. And so on. Once people really grok the sticker shock at the supermarket, the green thumbs will take over because it is easy to do and we do have the extra land for it, just go for a drive and *look*, tons of land that could be put to market gardening out there to supply local markets. Heck, if US suburbia went to half lawn/half garden that would be millions of acres "restored" to food production. And it won't require a single penny of government or academic studies or grants or anything, just normal human behavior reacting to increased grocery prices.

Biofuels Bumping Up Food Costs

Uncle Entity

Fri Aug 31 18:06:22 -0700 2007
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Yeah, doom and gloom...

One of the biggest reasons there were food shortages in a lot of countries is because the US subsidized grain and dumped it on the foreign markets. Local farmers couldn't compete with the extremely low rate so would lose their farms and go into the cities further increasing the problem.

Now we have a situation where grain prices have risen enough for local farmers to make enough to support their family and it is a *crisis*. The US should subsidize the poor farmer that relocated to the city forever apparently. If the poor farmer made enough money to get out of poverty, provide good quality food for the local population and through spending their money locally created enough economic momentum so the local population could afford their products then who would the UN Food Programme have to feed anymore? Its a bleepin' tragedy.

Hopefully this is beginning of the end of US dominated global food production. Why ship subsidized grain halfway around the world while also shipping overpriced fuel back when you can turn the unsubsidized grain into fuel and not destroy foreign markets. Win-win situation in my book.

This is actually an excellent time to contemplate the return of the small scale but diversified family farmer, at least as a part time job.

Where do I apply?

Biofuels Bumping Up Food Costs

mrjk

Sat Sep 01 09:31:13 -0700 2007
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Yes, for the first time in my lifetime smaller more efficient farming may become possible again. If all the industrial farming starts to concentrate on an industrial product, great! Well... partly anyway, I don't think we'll see the end of huge wheat, corn and soybeans, even when cellulose ethanol and biodiesal are 20% of supply. This rise of prices is great in my mind, it shows us that the value of (possibly) sustainable resources is growing.