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  • From: Marimike6@cs.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] The Food Crunch
  • Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:15:30 EDT

Here's a good article from Asia Times explaining one aspect of the current
food crunch:

"The FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and
not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for
food
supply globally, and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods from
cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. The use of cereals, sugar,
oilseeds
and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly increasing bio-fuel
industry, is one of the main drivers, most especially the large volumes of
maize in
the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil for ethanol and
bio-diesel production.

"This is already causing dramatically higher crop prices, higher feed costs
and sharply higher prices for livestock products. In the US this year
according
to the United States Department of Agriculture, some 25% of the corn crop
will go to bio-ethanol.

"Ironically, the current bio-ethanol industry is being driven by US
government subsidies and a scientifically false belief in the European Union
and US
that bio-ethanol is less harmful to the environment than petroleum fuels and
can
reduce CO-2 emissions. In a Swiss NZZ newspaper interview on March 23,
Nestle's chief executive Peter Brabeck warned that the dramatic conversion of
agriculture acreage to bio-fuels in the recent period was "political
madness". He
pointed out that its impact would be seen not only in exploding world wheat
prices.

"Just as serious," he added, bio-fuel production "threatens our water supply.
In order to produce one liter bio-ethanol we need 4,000 liters water. And
water is a more serious problem than CO-2 emissions."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/JD04Dk01.html




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