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The Forum > Article Comments > Competing interests - food or fuel? > Comments

Competing interests - food or fuel? : Comments

By Mark Rosegrant, published 3/1/2008

Biofuel production and climate change present unprecedented challenges that will shape the world’s food situation.

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This idea of trying to convert grain into fuel as environmentally friendly is rubbish. It is nothing more than the developed world being addicted to their automobiles. Forget it, it changes nothing. Get out of your car.
Posted by Porphyrin, Friday, 4 January 2008 2:18:05 PM
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Q&A, farmers should be beneficiaries as well. The price of wheat and other produce has been static for too long, and now there needs to be some catch-up for the inflation thats been going on around them. Until this last season wheat prices were the same as 20 years ago, but the price of, a tractor doubled, a farm ute has tripled, and thankfully I have forgotten what fertiliser cost then,it may be too much to bear.

Our farmers have been living in a first world economy getting third world prices. Something needed to happen to put some profitability back into farming, otherwise production was set to decline at a time while population is still growing.
Posted by rojo, Friday, 4 January 2008 4:01:02 PM
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Yeah rojo, I agree with you 100% about the farmers needing to be beneficiaries as well.

I understand all too well, myself having a strong connection to rural and regional Australia – with special regard in water resources and land use management. City folk don’t really appreciate the struggles people on the land go through, and will continue to go through.

You talk of inflation, it is going to get worse before it gets better – that is a given, regardless of who won the last election.

It is tough … and our political and business leaders (from all sides of the fence and all corners of the globe) are the ones that are going to have to deal with it because … the impacts of climate change is going to cost everybody – somewhere, somehow, sometime.

What is tragic? The people who deny that global warming or climate change is happening are going to be the first to complain that not enough is being done to curb the rising costs to the economy, community and environment from the very effects that they deny is happening in the first place.

This is why I am also in full agreement with Goeff when he says; “Food shortages are the stuff of civil unrest, wars that spill over national boundaries, starvation and misery. Are the rich of the world prepared to knowingly cause the shortages?”

I would add that the major cause of food shortages will in large part be due to unsustainable development and (mis)use of our finite resources.

The rich will do ok; the less well off will suffer ... there really does seem to be a dilemma in this scenario.
Posted by Q&A, Friday, 4 January 2008 7:39:03 PM
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Q&A, you raise good points, and so does Geoff. My current thoughts are that a growing population need an expanding food supply, and productivity(on a world scale) wasn't going to keep up at current prices. In that scenario people starve when a shortfall occurs. At least with bio-fuels there will be a stockpile of grains which can be diverted for food when need arises. The biggest issue is mandated fuel which would basically not allow this to happen, because the fuel must be produced no matter the cost of feedstocks. Currently the price of wheat is beyond the viable cost of ethanol production, and I believe corn is break even.
From memory half or so of grain production is used to feed animals, so I guess in the end it'll come down to spending our money on non-pasture fed products(chicken/pork) or fuel at increased prices.

I certainly don't know what the answer is for the poor, only that western production can't continue at prices they can afford. Unsubsidised production anyway.
Mandates will have to go once they've served their purpose of getting the industry started, we do need a way to encourage surpluses of grain that won't crash the food market.

A really big concern I have is the use of fertilisers whose production is heavily reliant on natural gas, and our other minerals are of finite supply. I'm not sure our current uses are factoring this in.
Posted by rojo, Saturday, 5 January 2008 11:50:54 AM
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Given the potential severe impact of food shortages, suggests that we should clearly understand the needs for the other interest(fuel).

The mainstream view is that man produced CO2 is causing warming and will continue to severe degrees. That is not what the reevalauted data, new data, and other technical assessments are indicating. The problem is that it takes some techncial fluency to cut through the volume of articles, movies that have proliferated to understand that there is nothing out of the ordinary that doesn't line up with naturally occuring historic cycles.

It seems hard to believe that these all spawn from a few sets of bad data that have proliferatd and been cited in so many other articles that it creates the appearance that a huge amount of novel techncial work solidly supports the theory.

Bottom line, is that if we jump on a CO2 warming bandwagon without letting the current accurate techncial assessments come out showing that the warming impact is minimal(at most) and potentially cooling as we enter a new solar cycle, it would be a disservice to millions of poor people in this world, and could almost be considered criminal. Note the incongruity of all this is that the opposite issue (cooling) may be the concern we should be thinking about.

Lastly, a potential use of public dollars for CO2 sequestration is a waste when such funds could be applied to cleaning the environment or other areas with real benefit to the human condition.

On a personal note, I have an engineering degree and have spent a lot of time reading up on this. I at first, believed the warming hypothesis(early1990's??), but it was from an uninformed technical position. I believed that the researchers had to be doing accurate work and must have been using acurate data. However, and possibly because I can understand some of the obscure analysis, I started reading the "rebuttals" and this is an amazing story for somemone to lay out for the public in as entertaining a way as the Al Gore movie.

Note: A good site on this topic is http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
Posted by Garacka, Saturday, 5 January 2008 1:04:43 PM
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Have you noticed that believers in global warming (or anthropogenic climate change) also tend to be believers in "acid" oceans, peak oil, and alternative energy (wind turbines etc) They probably also tend to eat mung beans and lentils. Not that there's anything wrong with mung beans or lentils- very healthy...
Maybe Al Gore could use some...
Now they may have a point about "peak oil", although the "Economist" reckons that the present price of oil is more about global politics than actual oil shortages.
I'm wondering whether there is some linkage there.
Anyone like to comment?
Posted by Froggie, Saturday, 5 January 2008 3:27:27 PM
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