Posted on 10/27/2007 11:33:03 AM PDT by BGHater
A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity.
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger.
The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels.
Mr Ziegler's remarks, made at the UN headquarters in New York, are clearly designed to grab attention.
He complained of an ill-conceived dash to convert foodstuffs such as maize and sugar into fuel, which created a recipe for disaster.
Food price rises
It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.
He called for a five-year ban on the practice.
Within that time, according to Mr Ziegler, technological advances would enable the use of agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves to produce fuel.
The growth in the production of biofuels has been driven, in part, by the desire to find less environmentally-damaging alternatives to oil.
The United States is also keen to reduce its reliance on oil imported from politically unstable regions.
But the trend has contributed to a sharp rise in food prices as farmers, particularly in the US, switch production from wheat and soya to corn, which is then turned into ethanol.
Mr Ziegler is not alone in warning of the problem.
The IMF last week voiced concern that the increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could have serious implications for the world's poor.
I agree with that statement.
Jean Ziegler was a Swiss socialist who claimed that Nestle backed the coup against Salvador Allende.
So do I, I guess a stopped clock is right once a day there...(military time)
Do you really believe that American’s don’t get enough corn starch in their diets?
True statement.
The rest of the world, comprised of stupid people, have chosen to use something other than capitalism as a engine to drive their economies. As a result, they are always one crop away from starvation. I say, let the stupid people starve.
As they do so, let's celibrate our prosperity by gowing organic food, which requires twice as much land to produce a lower quality crop that a lot of Americans enjoy eating. Let's BURN some of our food for fuel too.
And the rest of us can gourge ourselves on the most abundant, most varied, highest quality food ever experienced the ENTIRE history of the world.
There's a price for stupidity, in this case, probably starvation.
HATS OFF TO THE AMERICAN FARMER, THE GREATEST FARMERS THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!
The UN will only be happy when we feed the world for free.What do you get when you feed third worlders? Many more third worlders,that’s what.It’s a hopeless situation.
One of the largest corn syrup plants in the Country is about 10 miles away. What does that have to do with biofuels in Ethiopia? Everything.
I’ll remember that one. LOL
So, making corn syrup in the US forces Ethiopians to starve?
Not many people eat saltwater algae from the ocean. That's the ultimate biofuel solution. 70% of Earth's sun absorbing surface is saltwater.
No, My child, Making petrol out of it will cause it.
Perhaps oil producing countries need to send more charity to “underprivileged” countries in place of the US always doing so.
We are only doing what makes immediate sense to reduce our dependence on foreign oil—even if the net gain seems negligible at times.
I am not a greenie, but I hate sending money to islamofascists.
As someone who runs two vehicles on B100 biodiesel, I agree that the ethanol-from-corn process interferes with food supplies. I use biodiesel that largely comes from canola oil harvested in South America. Biodiesel can be made from many vegetable oils, including non-food sources such as rapeseed oil and plants that grow on otherwise unusable land.
Future sources of biofuels will include cornstalks and other non-food plants and plant parts.
FWIW
I would be curious to see the numbers on “Foreign Oil” imports, say: 2002 vs 2007. (As a percentage of course, as the population grows). I personally consider it bad business to take a food staple and make it an oil replacement. JMHO
Biofuels are actually a well-crafted means of creating an artificial scarcity of BOTH fuel and foodstuffs. Biofuels would only make sense as a means of reclaiming what would otherwise be a waste product, that would have to be disposed of anyway.
Generation of kerogen from industrial organic waste material, such as slaughterhouse offal, waste from timbering and wood milling processes, discarded paper waste, and organic roadside trash of all kinds, can be done by Thermal Depolymerization, or or the waste can be converted directly to electric generation through a Plasma Waste Disposal system, developed by Startech.
Take trash and make something out of it, by either changing the organic waste into kerogen, similar to the crude oil pumped up from the earth, or burning the mixtures of organic and inorganic waste in a plasma, and using the resulting products (gaseous diatomic hydrogen and carbon monoxide, plus inorganic molten glass-like slag) to power an electrical generation plant, and provide a perfectly satisfactory aggregate for roadbuilding or concrete production. Both these methods have the advantage of being carbon-neutral, that is, no fossil carbon is mined or extracted from the earth to change the balance of CO2 in any significant way. All the CO2 that is formed comes from other CO2 that was only recently sequestered.
Biofuels manufactured from foodstuffs diverted from the normal farm to market commerce, only cause the overall costs of the food AND the fuel to rise. Economically and as a way to preserve resources, it is no solution at all.
Without trying to be a smartass, could you explain how that is so?
Zimbabwe is the best example of socialist management of food farms.
Stupidity is a capital crime.
We’ve been feeding the world for 70 years without much fanfare. Mostly with corn. That will be hurt by the demand placed by the consumers of oil. I’m not against free enterprise but feel that using food as an oil replacement can’t be a good thing. Once again JMHO.
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