Law of unintended consequences

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Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries
Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels
By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 25, 2008

The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.

With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”

“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects.
“It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol,” Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. “It’s not going to be a very good diet but that’s roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year.”

Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him,” the professor said. “There are lots of solutions, real solutions to climate change. We need to get to those.”

Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore’s public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article.

However, the scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, has warned that climate campaigners are unwise to promote biofuels in a way that risks food supplies. “We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security,” Mr. Pachauri told reporters last month, according to Reuters. “Questions do arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert corn into sugar then into biofuels, into ethanol.”

In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his support for corn-based ethanol, but endorsed moving to what he called a “third generation” of so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory research. “It doesn’t compete with food crops, so it doesn’t put pressure on food prices,” the former vice president told Popular Mechanics magazine.

A Harvard professor of environmental studies who has advised Mr. Gore, Michael McElroy, warned in a November-December 2006 article in Harvard Magazine that “the production of ethanol from either corn or sugar cane presents a new dilemma: whether the feedstock should be devoted to food or fuel. With increasing use of corn and sugar cane for fuel, a rise in related food prices would seem inevitable.” The article, “The Ethanol Illusion” went so far as to praise Senator McCain for summing up the corn-ethanol energy initiative launched in the United States in 2003 as “highway robbery perpetrated on the American public by Congress.”

In Britain, some hunger-relief and environmental groups have turned sharply against biofuels. “Setting mandatory targets for biofuels before we are aware of their full impact is madness,” Philip Bloomer of Oxfam told the BBC.
Biofuel advocates say they are being made a bogeyman for a food crisis that has much more to do with record oil prices, surging demand in the developing world, and unusual weather patterns. “The people who seek to solely blame ethanol for the food crisis and the rising price of food that we see across the globe are taking a terribly simplistic look at this very complex issue,” Matthew Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association said.

Mr. Hartwig said oil companies and food manufacturers are behind the attempt to undercut ethanol. “There is a concerted misinformation campaign being put out there by those people who are threatened by ethanol’s growing prominence in the marketplace,” he said.

The most obvious impact the food crisis has had in America, aside from higher prices, is the imposition of rationing at some warehouse stores to deal with a spike in demand for large quantities of rice, oil, and flour. The CEO of Costco Wholesale Corp., James Sinegal, is blaming press hype for the buying limits, which were first reported Monday in The New York Sun.

“If it hadn’t been picked up and become so prominent in the news, I doubt that we would have had the problems that we’re having in trying to limit it at this point,” Mr. Sinegal told Fox News Thursday. “I mean, I can’t believe the amount of attention that is being paid to this.”

The Sun’s article, which came as food riots were reported abroad, circulated quickly on the Internet, was republished in newspapers as far away as India, and prompted local and network television stories.

Speaking in Kansas City, Mo., yesterday, the federal agriculture secretary, Edward Schafer, blamed emotion for the spurt of rice buying at warehouse stores. “We don’t see any evidence of the lack of availability of rice. There are no supply issues,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.

[Dee8go]

The Post had an article about this yesterday, too. In this area people panic if a snow storm is predicted. The grocery store shelves look like store shelves in Moscow! I guess it doesn't take much to cause a panic.

[Hatterasguy]

Yep I have been saying E85 was a bad idea since I first heard about it.

[aklim]

Farmers are getting big bucks for corn which is why they are doing it. Well, guess what, fertilizer has gone thru the roof. Rock Phosphate is being turned into fertilizer mostly because that is what is getting the most money as opposed to feed. Both have gone thru the roof and are going even further. 2 yrs ago, we bought Rock Phosphate for 1/3 of what it is today (assuming you can get it). Hopefully those farmers that lobbied for ethanol will take it where they deserve it. In the shorts.

[SwampYankee]

"This just in from the No $h!t Sherlock files..."

How none of the experts could foresee the trickle down effects is baffling. Our vine veggie seed contract prices are up 40% over last year, hybrid sweet corn is up 35% and everything else is up 25-30% as a direct result of decreased acreage because of corn for ethanol.

[raymr]

General Motors has been pushing for E85. Half a century ago, they managed to kill light rail and replace it with GM diesel buses in major US cities. Their solutions look attractive at first, but hindsight proved just the opposite. Whats good for GM isn't necessarily good for the country, or the world.

[Mistress]

Originally Posted by Dee8go

The Post had an article about this yesterday, too. In this area people panic if a snow storm is predicted. The grocery store shelves look like store shelves in Moscow! I guess it doesn't take much to cause a panic.

The Soviet Safeway. There is no shortage of fuel, they just want us to think there is....if we'd stop consuming so much we could turn the tables on "them."

[Dee8go]

Good luck with trying to get Americans to cut back on anything. The only thing that will do that is economic forces.

[catmandoo62]

well if you talk to chuck grassley or tom harkin from here in iowa they say there is nothing to worry about.sorry to say they have their heads up their asses.if they actually lived out here instead of washington they would realize that ethanol is raping the land to no end not to mention the astronomical amount of water they need to make ethanol.wells around here are drying up because of it.i can't wait for the bottom to fall out of the land values here in iowa.just heard yesterday that some farmland somewhere here in n.w. iowa sold for over 9,000 an acre.just last year it was under 4000.

[aklim]

Originally Posted by catmandoo62

well if you talk to chuck grassley or tom harkin from here in iowa they say there is nothing to worry about.sorry to say they have their heads up their asses.if they actually lived out here instead of washington they would realize that ethanol is raping the land to no end not to mention the astronomical amount of water they need to make ethanol.wells around here are drying up because of it.i can't wait for the bottom to fall out of the land values here in iowa.just heard yesterday that some farmland somewhere here in n.w. iowa sold for over 9,000 an acre.just last year it was under 4000.

The way you think is flawed. Whether they know it or realize it or whatever, they are NOT going to say that there is something to worry about because at this time, ethanol is a boon to them. You might as well try educate a welfare queen about how welfare is bad. Won't work.

[Knightrider966]

Using farmland for ethanol is a lousy idea since ethanol puts out less energy, much less than gasoline. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel that makes sense since we can get so much more energy from it and we can use waste products to make it! Ethanol costs way to much for what you get and is not worth the effort since it would never pay for itself if it wasn't being subsidised by the taxpayers!

Which brings me back to the one effort that will work, birth control and population growth controls!

[aklim]

Originally Posted by Knightrider966

Using farmland for ethanol is a lousy idea since ethanol puts out less energy, much less than gasoline. Biodiesel is the only alternative fuel that makes sense since we can get so much more energy from it and we can use waste products to make it! Ethanol costs way to much for what you get and is not worth the effort since it would never pay for itself if it wasn't being subsidised by the taxpayers!

Which brings me back to the one effort that will work, birth control and population growth controls!

But you are forgetting that going green is a political thing. You know it is worthless and I know it is worthless. However, the politician trying to score votes with say IA is going to tell you that it is a good thing for the farmers and going green, etc, etc. Reality has nothing to do with it.

Easier said than done.

[Larry Delor]

Whose bright idea was it to use food crops for fuel anyway? ADM?

[catmandoo62]

Originally Posted by aklim

The way you think is flawed. Whether they know it or realize it or whatever, they are NOT going to say that there is something to worry about because at this time, ethanol is a boon to them. You might as well try educate a welfare queen about how welfare is bad. Won't work.

well of course they aren't gonna say anything they own damn near half of iowa between em.