Leaders warn on biofuels and food

[hoon]

Two Latin American leaders have issued warnings about the effects of biofuel production on food supplies.

Speaking at the UN in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Leaders warn on biofuels and food

[Twig6]

While I'm not particularly for or against biofuels (I'm more "for" them if they aren't made out of food), I'm really tired of them being the scapegoat for rising food prices, because it so effectively distracts from the real issues.

If we had no biofuel production AT ALL, food prices would still be rising and food shortages and riots would still be happening because the system itself is broken. In fact, ethanol production (the only biofuel Western powers have really embraced) has not cut grain production in the U.S. one bit, the amount of grain NOT USED for ethanol has actually increased over the past 3 years:

American Fuels: Is ethanol taking food out of peoples mouths?

Which should make it obvious to anyone that there is no actual shortage of food, there is, in fact, plenty of it. The real problem which the noise machine is furiously distracting us from by this constant mantra of blaming biofuels first and foremost--is the distribution of those grains in a global food market that has meant the destruction of local food economies everywhere, including the West to a lesser degree. For example, Haiti:

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
Bill Quigley: The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

And the reason why there is so much distraction from this issue especially in the West is that if you connect the dots, it's pretty easy to see how poor nations' economies and food supplies have been destroyed over the past 30 years but also why real wages for the average person in the West haven't increased in those same 30 years, and why small farmers in the West have been dying out for the last 30 years--you can't actually compete fairly in a global economy with slave labor, huge agribusinesses, and loan-shark-like bodies like the IMF and World Bank keeping poor nations in a headlock so that a few multinational corporations and investors become obscenely wealthy while 99.85% of people lose on a sliding scale from something to everything.

The real shame of this distraction is to not see how the plight of Haiti is intimately connected to our own economic plight here in the West, because then people in the West might actually care a little bit more than offhandedly saying, "let them eat our cheap grain," and perhaps might see that a global fight for economic justice concerns them, too.

[screener]

yes, exactly.. it's not ethanol or biodiesel that is hurting anyone it's how it's being produced to meet the demand at the prices the fuel producers want to pay in order to get a big profit out of it. (Well, after you factor in the subsidies.) The way it's being produced is the same as food has been produced for the last thirty years.

In order to compete with highly subsidized agriculture in North America and Europe farmers in third world countries have been forced to deforestation, slash and burn, corporatization, loss of small farms, and poverty.

Local production for local use would be fine, the big problem there is that those of us who are using too much oil and gas now want to be able to continue using too much bio fuel. Our own land base isn't big enough to meet our needs and the destruction we cause is too far away for us to notice or be particularily concerned with.

Very similar to our need for cheap clothes, tv's, cars. toys, etc.

[forfismum]

Originally Posted by screener

In order to compete with highly subsidized agriculture in North America and Europe farmers in third world countries have been forced to deforestation, slash and burn, corporatization, loss of small farms, and poverty.

But they have always practised slash and burn and will try to continue to do so with or without biofuels.Problem is overpopulation,that carry on is unsustainable

[forfismum]

Originally Posted by Twig6

For example, Haiti:
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?

For another example Trinidad.
Trinidad produced all the rum it needed 80 years ago but when forfi was in Port of Spain in 1968 they had none Was there a secret plant making ethanol for the Soviet Airforce back then?

[Cricket Tragic]

Originally Posted by Twig6

The real problem which the noise machine is furiously distracting us from by this constant mantra of blaming biofuels first and foremost--is the distribution of those grains in a global food market that has meant the destruction of local food economies everywhere, including the West to a lesser degree. For example, Haiti:

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?

According to the FAO, production of agricultural staples (cereals, roots and tubers and pulses) in Haiti has grown from 900,000 tonnes in 1961 to 1.2 million tonnes today. The trouble is that population has increased from 3.8 million to 8.5 million over the same time. Only a third of Haiti is arable and most has been in agricultural production over the whole period. Insufficient increase in production with large increase in population will spell disaster.

Rice production in Haiti has gone up and down depending on the levels of government subsidies. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s production varied from 80,000 tonnes in 1970 to 135,000 tonnes in 1986. The highest production was in 1997 at 160,000 tonnes – 10 years after the Haitian rice industry supposedly “fell apart” with cheap US imports. Since then the acreage has decreased to 100,000 tonnes. Much of Haitian agriculture concerns acreage 2.5 acres of tree crops with root crops underneath and very little use of fertilizer.

The real problem with food security for Haiti is too many people on land that could never support them if they did not rely on imports from elsewhere. This means they are at the whim of international food prices – hence the current riots. Without serious agricultural structural reform or a great reduction in population the problems will remain into the future. Haiti closing their doors to food imports won’t help as it is impossible under current conditions for enough staple food to be grown to support the population.

[forfismum]

Looking at me photos from the forum sat. today I see that there are fires on the Kamchatka Peninsula and in Argentina,not to mention India, Myanmar, and China.There may be more that I can't spot but slash and burn is alive and well.

[screener]

slash and burn is alive and well, yes, so are forest fires, grass fires, peat fires, oil fires, it doesn't make slash and burn for the production of biofuels okay. Slash and burn makes the problem of green house gas emissions from production of dedicated plantings worse than they already are and puts them well into the range beyond oil and gas.

Serious structural changes are necessary. Not just in Haiti, or third world countries in general, but across the spectrum, from Britain to Bangladesh, from Cameroon to Canada, from DC to Darfur.

We can learn to live within our various energy budgets, nothing new, we've been told to understand budgeting and abide by it since high school.
Recognize the need for, and develop the will to, recognize when we are being subsidized by environmental degradation, social inequity, and resource depletion.

We in the developed world are the more likely to have surpluses that can be sent where it is needed rather than the other way around. Coffee is not a surplus to a country where starvation has become a way of life. Fair trade pays enough for products so that third world countries can redirect their agriculture to firstly ensure food for it's own people.

Serious structural change can take many forms. Coming to terms with energy, and ethical limitations might allow us to look beyond them instead of forcing them into a large brick wall.+

[Twig6]

Haiti’s “trouble” with population growth is directly related to the fact that cheap grain has been forced on them unceremoniously from the U.S., cause population is a function of food supply:

Human Population Numbers As a Function of Food Supply

Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability

If any local area is forced to accept a virtual flood of cheap food dumped on them, their population will likely increase proportionally to that dumping, especially if social democracy is repressed at the same time:

Sell The Lexus, Burn The Olive Tree

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Naomi Klein

The effect is magnified if it occurs over many years, when it becomes not “food aid” but “a place to continually dump our cheap grain so the whole economic charade can continue a bit longer.”

If Haiti had been treated as most other industrialized countries have been treated, vs. loan sharking them into ridiculous economic policies, their population would most likely have grown more along with their actual production and import capabilities. Their production would probably have been increased to keep up with more sustainable population growth and demand. And if there hadn’t been direct outside interference to keep them down (see above), the people there may have been able to fight for a more equitable social democracy.

But that’s a whole other issue to be discussed in the population thread--how cheap grain from the United States has helped to create unsustainable population growth in “third world” nations...at the same time as the West has worked feverishly to curtail social democracy in those nations per the same draconian IMF/World Bank policies.

Despite increases in food production, the increase in social/economic democracy in Western nations (specifically the emancipation of women) has led to decreased birth rates in the West and more sustainable population growth. Of course, you can’t achieve that democracy when you’re indebted to powerful institutions who are intent on reducing the population of your country to slave labor for large corporations.

Maybe now that economic chickens are coming home to roost in the West, more people will be willing to see the charade for what it really is, and how it affects them personally. I dunno. ???

[Cricket Tragic]

screener, what would be Haiti’s energy budget? They have little natural energy resources, so do they get to use imports?

The basic math is the following: for Haiti in 2008, 8.9 million people, 775,000 ha of arable land. That makes 0.087 ha of arable land per person. Population growth rate 2.4%. https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...ha.html#People

Compare this with the World: 6677.6 million people, 1982 million ha of arable land. This makes 0.297 ha of arable land per person. Population growth rate 1.16%.

I suggest it doesn’t matter what is done for Haiti, they are very unlikely to be able to feed their current population without imports. Haiti has 44,000 ha in coffee, but much of this land would be unsuitable for growing cereals, such as rice (the Haitian staple). In the case of Haiti, insisting coffee came out and food crops went in would likely have minimal impact on food security, but a major impact on the economic circumstances of coffee growers.