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Home Front Economy

Biofuels Good for Global Warming, Bad for Poor

2007-07-16

I heard this on the radio this morning, but it took a Google search to find this, from last week.
The burgeoning use of cereals and other commodities to satisfy appetite for biofuels could keep food prices high for the next decade, says the FAO, impacting developing countries, the urban poor, and farmers' livelihoods.
Drowning from ocean levels, storms, and climate change/global warming or starvation due to higher food prices. Life is choices!
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) last week published its latest Agricultural Outlook 2007-2016, in partnership with the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). It said that while the recent price hikes in farm commodity prices are due to temporary factors like drought in wheat growing regions, structural changes, such as increasing demand for biofuels, is casting a cloud over the long-term picture.

The growing use of cereals, sugar, oilseed and vegetable oils to produce fossil fuel substitutes are underpinning both crop prices and, indirectly, livestock product prices due to higher animal feed costs. The changes, says the report, "could well maintain relatively high nominal process for many agricultural products over the coming decade."

The FAO and OECD predict that the impact will be felt most keenly by net food importing countries and the urban poor. And for farmers who need feed for their livestock, it means mounting costs and lower incomes.
Unless, of course, the livestock markets are allowed the freedom to respond to market forces....
Moreover, the belief that high prices are here to stay could spur more policy reforms away from price support, the report predicts, "reducing the need for border protection and [providing] flexibility for tariff reduction".
Does the report think that's bad? I guess so, or it wouldn't be reported!
Last week Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck expressed his fears for the future of food prices in the long-term. Braback was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that "will have a long-lasting impact on food prices".

The FT said the comments were "among the starkest warning that a long period of rising food prices could stoke broader inflationary pressures".

Posted by:Bobby

#4 Well we need a cheap reliable source of food grown here in the US of A. High energy costs will make that not possible. We don't want to be importing all our food any more than we want to be importing all our energy. We need cheap supplies of both. That said the best thing we can do for Africa is cut all aid food and otherwise. Time to tell the UN sorry Charlie we are tapped out.

Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2007-07-16 18:08

#3 I find this rather disturbing. Most "solutions" to global warming seem to rely on sticking it to the little guy within the nation state. It doesn't matter that Average Joe American is way far wealthier than Average Juan Mexican: if both are on the same relative rung on the economic ladder, they get screwed equally.

Carbon trading is no help because the poor in the third world countries who supposedly must not develop themselves to provide the carbon offsets for the wealthy will never see the money being offered to help him compensate for his 'sacrifice': it will be intercepted by the rich and the connected aristocrats who, the world over, think themselves as being superior to the average joe in their nation.

Posted by: ptah 2007-07-16 15:18

#2 This is the solution we have needed for quite some time. Less available free food means necessarily less overproduction of third world, malcontnets. Recall that food deprivation was wide spread in the first half of the 20th century and served as nature's monitor on population over growth. It wasn't until Uncle Sugar started passing around freebies in massive amounts that the rat population began to explode. Not only that, moving to other fuel sources will rapidaly diminish Saudi income and will reduce their expanionist methods, due to their needing to allocate much more of their income toward food staples. Definitely heading dowm the right path here. And that is seconded by the squawking from the UN beggars.

Posted by: Woozle Elmeter2970 2007-07-16 12:40

#1 Just waiting for the environmental wacko to be the first to say - "Let them eat plastic".

Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-07-16 09:42

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