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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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When food prices rose steeply in 2007 and climaxed in the winter of 2008, politicians and the press decried the impact on the billion or so people who were already going hungry. Excellent growing weather and good harvests provided temporary relief, but prices have once again soared to record heights. This time around people are paying less attention.
The public has a short attention span regarding problems of the world’s have-nots, but experts are partly to blame, too. Economists have made such a fuss about how complicated the food crisis is that they have created the impression that it has no ready solution, making it seem like one of those intractable problems, like poverty and disease, that are so easy to stash in the back of our minds. This view is wrong.
To be sure, reducing hunger in a world headed toward more than nine billion people by 2050 is a truly complicated challenge that calls for a broad range of solutions. But this is a long-term problem separate from the sudden rise in food prices. High oil prices and a weaker dollar have played some part by driving up production costs, but they cannot come close to explaining why wholesale food prices have doubled since 2004. The current price surge reflects a shortfall in supply to meet demand, which forces consumers to bid against one another to secure their supplies. Soaring farm profits and land values support this explanation. What explains this imbalance?
Crop production has not slowed: total world grain production last year was the third highest in history. Indeed, it has grown since 2004 at rates that, on average, exceed the long-term trend since 1980 and roughly match the trends of the past decade. Even with bad weather in Russia and northern Australia last year, global average crop yields were only 1 percent below what the trends would lead us to expect, a modest gap.
The problem is therefore one of rapidly rising demand. Conventional wisdom points to Asia as the source, but that’s not so. China has contributed somewhat to tighter markets in recent years by importing more soybeans and cutting back on grain exports to build up its stocks, which should serve as a warning to policy makers for the future. But consumption in China and India is rising no faster than it has in previous decades. In general, Asia’s higher incomes have not triggered the surge in demand for food.
That starring role belongs to biofuels. Since 2004 biofuels from crops have almost doubled the rate of growth in global demand for grain and sugar and pushed up the yearly growth in demand for vegetable oil by around 40 percent. Even cassava is edging out other crops in Thailand because China uses it to make ethanol.
Increasing demand for corn, wheat, soybeans, sugar, vegetable oil and cassava competes for limited acres of farmland, at least until farmers have had time to plow up more forest and grassland, which means that tightness in one crop market translates to tightness in others. Overall, global agriculture can keep up with growing demand if the weather is favorable, but even the mildly poor 2010 growing season was enough to force a draw down in stockpiles of grain outside China, which sent total grain stocks to very low levels. Low reserves and rising demand for both food and biofuels create the risk of greater shortfalls in supply and send prices skyward.
Although most experts recognize the important role biofuels play, they often underestimate their effects. Many of them misinterpret the economic models, which understate the degree to which biofuels drive up prices. These models are nearly all designed to estimate biofuels’ effects on prices over the long term, after farmers have ample time to plow up and plant more land, and do not speak to prices in the shorter term. Commentators also often lump all sources of crop demand together without recognizing their different moral weights and potential for control. Our primary obligation is to feed the hungry. Biofuels are undermining our ability to do so. Governments can stop the recurring pattern of food crises by backing off their demands for ever more biofuels.
This article was originally published with the title A Quick Fix to the Food Crisis.
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40 Comments
Add CommentJust like all fuels are not equal- all bio-fuels are not too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFuel from algae may be harvested from otherwise non-farmable land. Some grasses that can be used for bio-fuel can also be grown on otherwise less hospitable land.
Bio-fuel from food processing scraps doesn't take up farm land.
There could be a place for bio-fuel that does not compete directly for farmland. Nations need to manage their natural resources smartly.
Funny, I was under the impression that the entire point of shifting food-farming subsidies to ethanol subsidies was to increase the price of food. Food, because of subsidies by countries intent on being food self-sufficient (mostly the US and EU), has been way too cheap for way too long. It was, literally, being sold for less than it cost to grow. Don't forget those farmers protesting against these subsidies at the Doha Summit. Those subsidies were killing the non-subsidised farmers, and driving them off the land to whatever work they could find in urban centres. Why farm when it costs more to grow the food than you can buy it when imported? Well, those food subsidies lasted way too long and skewed the market to the point of shifting massive numbers of people to new ways of life. Now, the food subsidies are gone, shifted to ethanol so the crop-land (as you point out) can still be shifted back to food production if needed. Of course food is now more expensive. Of course poor people will be hit the hardest. But, the reality is that millions of people adapted to a way of life that was artificially subsidised by the US and EU governments intent on being the people growing rather than importing food. Ethanol is the solution to this problem and will allow smaller farmers to return to the land and make a decent living. Remember, as you pointed out, for every person paying twice as much for food, there is some farmer being paid twice as much to grow it, and some other new farmer thinking about starting to grow food again. In the long run, we're going to look back at turning food-crops into ethanol as a very, very good thing. It will allow farmers all over the world to make a decent living while still keeping the land available for food production when the world really needs it. The poor that grow hungry in the mean time shouldn't blame ethanol for their problem, they should blame the old food subsidies that put them where they are now. Similarly, rather than attacking ethanol production, we should be figuring out how to help those poor people adapt to their lose of artificially-low food prices, prices that should never return.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that competition between food and fuel crops can produce food prices comparable to fuel prices. I think it was Malaysia that converted their croplands to the growing of palms for the production of palm oil in order to gain fuel independence, only to discover that locals could no longer afford to buy food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps a more critical yet often ignored factor in the supply of food is population growth. The population of Earth has nearly doubled in the past forty years. It has quadrupled since 1900.
While America has for many decades been in the enviable position of being able to afford to buy food no matter how any natural disasters might affect food production, we may someday soon be unable to outbid China, for example, for food produce.
Moreover, modern food production is dependent on not only fuel but water resources. In the meantime, global corporations such as Nestle's have become very active in the privatization of natural water resources around the world. Potable water is, of course, directly required for human survival as well.
The availability of food is threatened by natural as well as man-made conditions (thought to include global warming) without removing croplands from the production of food for the production of fuel. We will soon be hard pressed to meet the minimum daily nutritional requirements of populations around the world, for many potential reasons.
This is a unique issue in that most environmentalists and conservatives oppose corn based ethanol. End ethanol subsidies now! It's sad that a proposal to do exactly that failed in the US Senate this week, despite the clear environmental, fiscal, and yes food price benefits it offered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEh, let the market decide. End the subsidies and if fixerdave is correct (and I mean ALL agricultural subsidies) then things will work themselves out, since food has an inelastic demand production should rise until prices fall to near the marginal cost of production. Notice though, that won't make 3rd world farmers rich, or even guarantee that they can subsist. It is really not a simple problem, but DN'G is right, there are other ways to produce biofuels that don't involve reduced food output. Unfortunately they're competitive (nor even close) with fossil fuels as long as we continue to fail to internalize their costs. Ironically the best thing we may be able to do for food prices in the long run are carbon fees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSwitching from food crops to non food plants would be the first step.The government needs to produce grants to develop the necessary enzymes so this goal can be reached.The sooner the better.With little modification to current ethanol plants this dream can be achieved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTimothy Searchinger: I have taken the time to read your article on the current food crises. I find it wanting; during your research you did not look at all aspects of the problem before you wrote this article. You seem to have been convinced that bio-fuel was the problem from the start, and wrote an article to justify this belief.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou spend effort explaining away population's impact on demand for food, you chose China and India as models of nations harboring rapidly increasing populations that meet their food needs to some extent, but completely disregard massive population growth across Africa, Latin and Central Americas and the rest of the world. An example: Egypt, with all its current turmoil, essentially a response to food prices and shortages, had a stable population of about 10M up to the time of Nasser, this increased dramatically to 85M in recent times. Bangladesh is another small country with a population 10 fold population increase since independence. These stories repeat themselves across the world. India and China have an advantage of a large block of educated people.
If you want to write about food and population, I believe essential reading is: An Essay on Population by The reverend Thomas Malthus and The Tragedy Of the Commons by Garrett Hardin.
Your ideas of farmers adjusting to demand by tearing down forests and grasslands to create more farmland is more of a problem that a solution. At the end of the day natural selection has its way. Famine is its way of adjusting population and it has always been so. Man believes he has overcome unthinking nature, only for a very short while, Malthus's population boom bust theory has raised its ugly head, since we are exuberant unthinking breeders.
The continuing growing of world population around the globe combines with increase of income earned by people from emerging countries such as China and India are believed to be the key for boosting the demand of food. Without sufficient matching on the supply side, food prices keep on soaring under the influence of imbalance. Food crisis happens when people with hunger could no longer afford to be satisfied and /or maintain minimum nutritional requirements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncrease of income earned by people from emerging countries such as China and India increase the appetite in consumption of meat. Part of the crops to be consumed by people is now being diverted to be used as fodder for livestock. Government in different countries may set up control in import/export and policies in usage of crop independently or join forces with others to alleviate the problem according to their goals.
Apart from the uncontrollable factors pertaining to bad weather , increase in production of bio-fuel leading to inappropriate use of farmland and the declining crop planting activities for food use are the major causes to the shortfall on supply. With the lack of proper subsidization to the farmers by government for crop planting for food use, farmers misuse the land to produce ethanol as bio-fuel for earning higher profit . More people begin to replace bio-fuel for fossil fuels used in their automobiles when they realize its benefit to the environment due to the lower CO2 equivalency emission. What government should do is to ensure farmers who engage in crop planting for food use are sufficiently subsidized so that more farmers are able to earn income from the proper use of the farmland. On the other hand, government must also aware not to overweigh the use of bio-fuel for batting climate change purpose when their production is in competition for farmland where crops are planted for human consumption. Alternate strategies such as educating their people to increase the use of public transportation and/or adoption of carbon tax could be considered useful as people will be more sensitive on the quantity of fuel used instead of focusing on the nature of the fuel alone.
i think it would be good idea. if we encourage the third world countries to produce more too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe subtitle "Curbing biofuels should halt price rises" is misleading. It should read "Curbing biofuels used for food. . .". Most potential biofuels in the world are trees and grasses that are not competitive with food and it would be contra-productive to our energy needs not to develop sustainable harvesting of these and their development as important contributers to energy generation. Several projects for development of fuels from these and other cellulosic sources such as corn stover, rice husks and switchgrass are underway and should be encouraged. What should be "fixed" is the use of potential food competitive fuels such as corn and grains, but promotion of these is done through such efforts as the farm lobby, anxious to boost farm based food prices at the expense of the hungry and needy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSearchinger’s “Quick Fix” would definitely exacerbate long term problems. The only way we can fix our greenhouse gas problem is to slow the extraction of fossil carbon. Biomass is the only alternative to fossil carbon for liquid fuels. If we don’t develop renewable, biomass-based energy sources for the production and distribution of food, our problems will only be compounded as climate change and petroleum depletion take their toll. The opinion Searchinger promotes undermines our ability to feed the hungry today and our potential to feed and fuel the world tomorrow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Searchinger has totally missed the point in his attempt to fault biofuels for rising food prices. Over half the cost of food crop production comes from the cost of fuel involved to plant, fertilize, harvest and market. In the last decade these fuel costs have more than quadrupled, an Energy Crisis. Thus, the food price would not drop significantly if biofuels production stopped tomorrow. However, crops like sugar and corn converted to ethanol are even more energy intensive requiring over 80% fuel-based energy to produce a “replacement” product. We have mistakenly proceeded in this direction, poor energetic yield and efficiency. At the same time, more CO2 is produced than is sequestered in the crops. Fortunately, renewable resources such as lignocellulose (wood and crop wastes) can be converted to liquid replacement fuels with a far lower energy overhead. It is this energetic efficiency that must be considered in the solution to the real energy crisis that is causing fuel prices to soar and food prices with them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTharter : Free markets must have restrictions : Should we let the market decide if crime should be punished or not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, pyrolysis can convert any biomass into biofuel. It is only when the biomass is also food that there is a problem.
Sadly, this article desperately needs a fact check. Corn based ethanol does not use corn fit for human use. The majority of U.S. corn is used for animal feed. The ethanol uses the sugar from the corn. The food products are then sold to farmers to use as animal feed, a product commonly referred to as DDGS (Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles). A good source for Dr. Searchinger is http://www.ddgs.umn.edu/overview.htm at the University of Minnesota. So unless the author plans to have Americans eat animal feeds, it is unlikely whether the short run effects would follow his assumptions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the comments seem to ignore a the fact that most of the cost of food is in the Food services and Food Processing industry groups. Based on a recent USDA report published in February 2011 "A Revised and Expanded Food Dollar Series" that looked at the relative cost of producing food. One of the food dollar series looked at the value added from 10 distinct food supply chain industry groups to the food dollar. This group shows Farm & agribusinesses make up only 11.6 cents of the dollar spend on food in 2008. Food services and food processing are responsible for 33.7 and 18.6 cents respectively. The major cost of food is not in the raw product but the costs of processing and delivering food to the stores. The report also states "This series indicates that payments from each food dollar going to the energy industry group approached 7 cents in 2008, an increase of 75 percent since 1998." This would indicate to me that finding alternative sources of energy for transportation and processing would be better than worring about the price of commodities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother point I would like to make is corn used to produce Ehtanol is not all used for fuel production. One by product of the process is wet mash of corn protein that can be fed to livestock to supplement other feed ingredients needed by the growing cattle. Unfortunately many of the Ethanol production facilities were built in the corn production areas and not near feedlots where the feed can be easily used. So transportation costs increase the expense of using this material. The costs of energy and processing has a much larger impact on food costs than people want to believe.
Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Most informed people know that food crops are the worst thing to use to make biofuels from. Corn (kernels), for example, is carbon-positive unless you use the stalks for biofuels. There are many things that can be used for biofuels that are carbon-negative or even carbon-neutral. Let's focus on us. If we are using corn or other "food" crops to make biofuels, then we are idiots. I hear/see the oil & corn lobbyists getting too much "hear" time in this issue. WE can use any biomass to make ethanol. WE could make enough biofuels just from collecting what the supermarkets & farmers throw away. Of course, the most carbon-negative thing we could use is hemp but we still cannot grow it here as we have not overcome years of fear to go back to the original Ford automobile that ran on hempoline not gas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for stepping up here. I responded as well based on what I get from you & other as a big supporter of your research & activism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is right ON!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhenever food stuffs are used for other non-food uses, crimes have been committed against everyone, especially the poor.
Hello Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a bit confused! Biofuels (specifically, those that are made from corn and other major crops) make up a a good chunk of the current types of usable fuel. The others being coal and oil/natural gas. Say, if the government doesn't back the need for "bio fuels", following your statement. What would be the consequence of that? Any further research, into this area would occur on a minimal level. Now we would rely mainly on coal, and natural gas/oil? All of these are limited resources. Other resources are not yet viable enough to be used mainstream. Once these resources start to dwindle then what? What shall we use then? (This is what I am confused about)
Hello,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut do we not need these crops to research? What about the crimes committed by polluting the earth, through using oil or coal?
Hello Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a fellow conservative and a hopeful future scientist. I feel the need to ask you this. What else except corn, would allow you to make ethanol in such a manner that it can be used as widely as corn based ethanol?
There are several misconceptions about corn ethanol efficiency. Few seem to acknowledge that the protein component, the embryo of the grain, is sold and utilized as feed for livestock. Energy for production of corn ethanol returns 1.3-2.5 times as much energy as is used to produce it, including the energy to make the crop. The return is greatest in the midwestern US where most is not irrigated, the land was cleared for farming 150 years ago. Research and technolgy are continuing to improve efficiency of both the production of corn grain and the conversion of its stored energy into ethanol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed and hats off to you, Scientific Earthling. But I would go farther, because in my own family we have given existence to young children who are unable to read and have physical problems that should not be passed on. However, most of the women that my sons married are hell bent on increasing the entropy of the gene pool. I have a neighbor who, because she is dyslexic couldn't understand which candidate voted to pay for the bill for a city in our county. She totally misread the newspapers and misheard the news reports. This is only two examples of why worrying about the food crisis for people like than in our own nation is useless. The Malthusian Trap is already destroying our system. Even the elites who think they have money to pay for the likes of Paris and other leaches like that are non productive so let the starvation of the people clear the world. None of the nations of the world seem able to both limit population and keep their part of the world enviornmentally safe. If only 2012 were for real, the next species might be a better choice for dominance, rather than the human species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Searchinger's comment show a lack of depth and understanding of the complexities of food and fuel production in the United states. First, only about 2 billion bushes of corn are used in ethanol production, out of a total production of more than 160 billion bushes. The amount of soybean or other oil crops is even less. The current wet conditions this spring have had a greater impact on corn production and prices than ethanol production. There are more than 16 million acres of farm land currently idle in the US (either through farmer retirement, government programs, bankrupcy, etc) - enough to grow 2.56 billion bushels of corn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real issues, not mentioned by Mr. Searchinger, are that costs of foods in the US have long been artifically low, profit margins for US farmers neglible, and the ability to pass on farms to the next generation severely tax-impaired. The average age of the US farmer is currently 55. Furthermore, the margin over cost of production for corn has been so narrow for so long that many farmers have switched production to other commodities to survive.
Our stores of most commodities are at 30 year lows - wheat, oats, corn, soybeans, etc. Costs have dramatically increased for non-food products also - just look at cotton. Part of this is driven by global demand - we farmers sell our crops to the highest bidder - China, India and other countries flush with US dollars do to trade imbalance. In turn, this drives up costs in the US. There is no need to "fix" the cost of commodities in the US - if production costs stay stable and return on investments are adequate (for the first time in decades) the US farmer will respond.
Relative to income the US spends less than most countries on food. Mr. Searchinger should direct his energies (and his donations) to those social programs which will purchase open market commodities for the "hungry and needy" and donate them. The US benefits greatly from selling all commodities worldwide, and we should encourage, not discourage, that production. There is no reason we cannot continue to help feed the world - it just has to be at a rate of return that is sustainable to the American Farmer.
The entire agricultural industry in intertwined. I do not discount the impact of biofuels on prices, but as a farmer I have enough margin on my crops for the first time in years to cover the costs of fertilizer, seeds, equipment, taxes and just maybe have something left to cover the risk of the next drought, flood, or government driven collapse in farm prices.
The simple solution to obtaining biofuels is to Pyrolyse non-alimentary biomass, then apply the Fischer-Tropsch process to obtain bio-diesel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiomass is spread evenly throughout inhabited areas, so Pyrolysis will be a decentralised industry entailing very little transport costs, and employing local people by millions. As pyrolysis units prolifer, they will become very cheap and increase the standard of living of poor countries considerably.
71% of the earth is ocean and is ideal for growing crops. The deep ocean has no insects or weeds that require the use of oil to control. Water is not a problem when simple solar stills are included in the design of an ocean farm. Inexpensive rafts can be made from plastic bottles, barrels and styrofoam encased in resin. The rafts would be virtually unsinkable and can be made from recycled materials that now clog our land fills. Floating windmills would provide power to run the islands. Malthus was right and even ocean farms would only buy us a few dozen decades to find a better solution. Ocean farms would remove carbon from the atmosphere, relieve the pressure on the food supply, slow the filling of our land fills and provide jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this71% of the earth is ocean and is ideal for growing crops. The deep ocean has no insects or weeds that require the use of oil to control. Water is not a problem when simple solar stills are included in the design of an ocean farm. Inexpensive rafts can be made from plastic bottles, barrels and styrofoam encased in resin. The rafts would be virtually unsinkable and can be made from recycled materials that now clog our land fills. Floating windmills would provide power to run the islands. Malthus was right and even ocean farms would only buy us a few dozen decades to find a better solution. Ocean farms would remove carbon from the atmosphere, relieve the pressure on the food supply, slow the filling of our land fills and provide jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this71% of the earth is ocean and is ideal for growing crops. The deep ocean has no insects or weeds that require the use of oil to control. Water is not a problem when simple solar stills are included in the design of an ocean farm. Inexpensive rafts can be made from plastic bottles, barrels and styrofoam encased in resin. The rafts would be virtually unsinkable and can be made from recycled materials that now clog our land fills. Floating windmills would provide power to run the islands. Malthus was right and even ocean farms would only buy us a few dozen decades to find a better solution. Ocean farms would remove carbon from the atmosphere, relieve the pressure on the food supply, slow the filling of our land fills and provide jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaize (USA)produces 10 times less energy than sugarcane (Brazil).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrazil's successful ethanol is a good way of controlling food prices without subsidies (while in Brazil overall subsidies ate at about 5%, in the USA they are 17% and in the EC 22%).
The real problem is distribution: Less food for pets, less meat, and less food wastage. There is aplenty, but it is squandered. And farmers need to be paid their real worth.
Does it make any sense, this day and age, on this planet, to burn up someone's food?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article poses an interesting and valuable question: Are we taking food out of the mouths of the world's poor to just power our cars and trucks?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo help us answer that question, it would have been quite helpful if the author, Timothy Searchlinger had informed us of the percentage of grains that get converted to ethanol.
Although I don't know the percentage of grains that become animal fodder, I suspect it is very substantial. Growing crops as cattle, pig, or chicken fodder is extremely inefficient as it takes several corn, wheat, or other grain calories to produce one meat calorie, because most of the grain food energy just goes to keeping the animal alive. Often those animal lives are lived in horrible factory farms, only to die in slaughterhouses. A meat-based diet is hardly conducive to human health, as well.
My point is that we should curb the use of grains as feedstocks for both fuel and meat production. At the same time, we need to look for curb our appetite for both fuel and meat. To reduce fuel needs, we need more efficient vehicles and we need to use them less by relying on our two feet (walking), bicycles, transit, and telecommuting. Reducing our need for meat obviously means eating less (or no) meat.
Further, stating that we need more food to meet a growing population begs the questions of why we need a growing population and what is an optimal population.
- It's often stated that we need a growing population so to provide labor to support a growing population of elders. Even as an elder, I feel this idea smells like a Ponzi scheme.
- With the threat of global climate change, other environmental hazards, and food shortages, it's clear that an optimal population would be small.
I agree partly with the contention that current models forecast long- term effects, and that the short- term effects are often overlooked. As many other readers gave pointed out, I wish to reiterate that current research on biofuels is based on phasing out food- derived feedstock for production of biofuels, and switching to those sources which will not compete with food. Examples include short- rotation woody crops such as poplar, grasses such as switchgrass and miscanthus and agricultural residues like corn stover. By curbing biofuels, most of the research will be undone and we will be back to square one. And when the need arises again, corn ethanol will again seem as the saviour for our fuel woes. Please look up the various solutions researchers are coming up with to avoid using food feedstock and use biomass that is generally untenable for food. A vast world of amazement awaits you, Mr Searchinger.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think we should seprate the thing that we produce for food and the thing that we produce for making biofuels.another thing is to encourage countries like china and india that have a large population to proudce more.by this price rises will be halt.this is good for that countries too because by this they can provide there food needs they can also use a part of this products for making biofuels and this is profitable for them.another way for halting price rises is to make biofuels from things that are not competitive with food like trees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think its not a good idea finding another fuel that we have to burn it for use.A better idea is to find something for locomoting cars that we dont have to toburn it.Forexample electricity,sunlight,or even nuclear power!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou see when everyone knows there is so many people in africa that dont have anything,I mean really nothing to it,how governments can use crops just for producing fuel!
You know,africans in famine will be happy to have just 1kg food every day and I think that governments can do it.
thank you for reading the comments,
thank you "Timothy Searchinger" for this issue.
please help at least 1$ for africans...
In this situation that 12 milion people in Somalia and other countries are hungry and every 6 minutes one of them dies governments have to change their politics at least in this moment. because we can use other fuels instead of Ethanol nevertheless they can't consume anything instead of food also in these days the price of oil isn't so high as a result they can use gasoline or diesel for providing fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI dont think the governments pay much attention to these things like famine in the somalia' because a country that produces biofuels from grains are reach countries & most of them export crops to poor contries.Brazil is one of the countries that import oil & because of that this country is planning to replace biofuels instead of gasoil & gasolin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this situation that 12 milion people in Somalia and other countries near there are hungry and every 6 minutes one of them dies ,governments have to change their politics at least in this moment because we can use other fuels instead of Ethanol nevertheless they can't consume any other thing instead of food also in these days the price of oil isn't so high as a result governments can use gasoline or diesel for consuming fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit was intresting .maybe i didnt know any thing about biofuel but when you read this article ,you can realaize how important is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisany how in such a modern world ,it seems silly to be unable to control the agriculture which is belong to new scientific methods
It worth mentioning that always there are some middlemen who just think about their benefits and they dont care to the community and i think in this case the governments are responsible to limit them.
I think in this century we should know that we produce these thing for what?for making biofuels or using as food?I suggest to those countries that the supply is too high,like china and india,is too encourage people to produce their necessary things by their country not importing things from other country furthermore I should mention that when we see these famine-hit people that they really need,how can we permit us to produce crops to make fuel indeed cassava is edging out other crops in Thailand because china used it to made ethanol.Think just for a moment.It is really not sustainable&human,isnt it?finally I hope that in the future everyone dont pay attention to his or her benefits and thinks to the other persons put himself instead of those people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are many articles written like this one, which avoid the primary issue. Remember Garrett Hardin? One of you does. Garrett always put his finger on a primary point, taboo subjects. Remember when people wouldn't talk about abortion, or HIV, or right to die, and other taboo subjects. It seems that talking about too many people is taboo. Fewer people would solve the food issue, or people forced to live where a tsunami is likely to hit or where it is likely to be flooded, or on the side of active volcanos. Most of the problems that effect people would not exist if there were fewer people. But it seems taboo to invest money in population reduction rather than sending robots to Mars, or running high priced wars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this