Re: [Vo]:Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket

[Michael Foster]

--- On Mon, 4/14/08, Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> From: Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [Vo]:Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket
> To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
> Date: Monday, April 14, 2008, 2:07 PM
> Many experts, such as Pimentel, saw this coming years ago.
> Our 
> policies led directly to it, which is a disgrace and a
> crime against 
> humanity. See:
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/index.html
> 
> Some quotes:
> 
> 
> The issue is also fueling a rising debate over how much the
> rising 
> prices can be blamed on ethanol production. The basic
> argument is 
> that because ethanol comes from corn, the push to replace
> some 
> traditional fuels with ethanol has created a new demand for
> corn that 
> has thrown off world food prices.
> 
> Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food,
> has 
> called using food crops to create ethanol "a crime
> against humanity."
> 
> "We've been putting our food into the gas tank --
> this 
> corn-to-ethanol subsidy which our government is doing
> really makes 
> little sense," said Columbia University's Sachs.
> 
> Former President Clinton, at a campaign stop for his wife
> in 
> Pennsylvania over the weekend, said, "Corn is the
> single most 
> inefficient way to produce ethanol because it uses a lot of
> energy 
> and because it drives up the price of food."
> 
> Some environmental groups reject the focus on ethanol in
> examining food prices.
> 
> "The contrived food vs. fuel debate has reared its
> ugly head once 
> again," the Renewable Fuels Association says on its
> Web site, adding 
> that "numerous statistical analyses have demonstrated
> that the price 
> of oil -- not corn prices or ethanol production -- has the
> greatest 
> impact on consumer food prices because it is integral to
> virtually 
> every phase of food production, from processing to
> packaging to 
> transportation."
> 
> Analysts agree the cost of fuel is among the reasons for
> the 
> skyrocketing prices.

I agree that the price of oil is likely the main factor in rising food prices. 
However, it's not just ethanol from corn that's to blame for diverting valuable 
food resources inefficiently into making "renewable"  fuels. There are rape 
seed and other vegetable oil producing crops for making biodiesel, displacing 
food crops such as barley and rice.  Further, if you buy into the 
anthropogenic-carbon-global warming argument (I don't), more forest and other 
natural carbon sequestring areas are being destroyed to grow such crops.

Obviously, the rapid industrialization of formerly agrarian-socialist economies 
such as India and China, with their now higher caloric diets are a major factor 
as well.  In other words, a couple of billion people can now afford more 
expensive food, as well as consuming more energy in their industries.

The U.S., with its highly productive agribusiness, may have more of a hand to 
play in the world power game than simply as a consumer of foreign oil, don't 
you think?  Even a**holes like ADM may go back into the food business.

M.






      
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