Jingsamichty

Following Novo's successful thread yesterday, here's one for today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7472532.stm

Oxfam claim 30 million people have been forced into poverty as a direct result of rising prices for food crops. The prices are being driven up by rich countries buying food crops to use in ethanol/biofuel production, as these countries try to meet EU targets of making 10% of all transportation run on renewable fuels by 2020.

Biofuels - robbing poor Peter to make rich Paul feel better? Discuss.

dbd33

The production of biofuels has directly resulted in an increase in the price of hay. I'm not thrilled with that.

iaink

I was astonished to find out that a farmer friend of mine here actually exported his last crop of hay almost entirely to Greece of all places! Usually its trucked down to Florida for some reason. Must be quality stuff.


If there are heavy quoatas to prevent farmers growing too much of certain crops I dont quite get why its not possible to grow enough food and energy bearing crops to satisy everyones needs, if only the political will was there to do so?

Steve_P

We have a friend who regularly ships hay to Japan.

Jingsamichty

Christalmighty! To me it kinda defeats the purpose of being green if we're going to ship hay to Japan or Greece....

I was in the supermarket yesterday and I wanted to buy a couple of onions. The Canadian onions only came in the big 5lb net bags, but I didn't need or want 5lbs. The only loose onions came from Spain.

And why do we need to ship water all the way from France?

Flogger

[QUOTE=

I was in the supermarket yesterday and I wanted to buy a couple of onions. The Canadian onions only came in the big 5lb net bags, but I didn't need or want 5lbs. The only loose onions came from Spain.


Stick them in a dark cupboard and they will last for ages

Novocastrian

You have to differentiate between different crops.

Sugar cane and rapeseed are the best sources of biofuel but corn, as used in the US and in Canada, is not a good idea. The main problem being the amount of N-fertilizer corn needs, which is metabolized by soil bacteria with a side product N2O, which is about 300x worse than CO2 in terms of its greenhouse effect (when measured as Global Warming Potential).

This was pointed out by Nobel Prize Winner Paul Crutzen about 5 years ago.


I'm not convinced that the biofuel -> food price link is well established though. But I'm no expert.

Jingsamichty

That must be one for the Wiki. Thanks!

Steve_P

If you're going to do a Wiki then put in there it should be a cool dark cupboard.

Flogger

No probs

Alberta_Rose

I was going to post this in the other thread, but it's more relevant here maybe:

A student was explaining to me the other week how he'd looked into ethanol production and all sorts of reasons why it was neither that environmentally nor human-friendly. The amount of wheat required was one thing, and the impact on food sources if wheat was sold for fuel rather than food as mentioned in the first thread. And then these: http://www.econet.sk.ca/issues/ethanol/envissues.html

acer rose

Sadly, most people are seeking solutions that will mean business as usual. A few hard-core listserves are populated by sustainability conscious folk but the behavioural changes urgently required are just too inconvenient for too many people.

JonboyE

We don't need to. But we will continue to do so as long as there are mugs around who will pay enough for it to turn a profit.