Yabby, increased grain production will be from more marginal land increasing the prospect of crop failures/shortages, with the urban poor the losers again.
Also I don’t think China and India, our two largest wheat producers, will/can respond to price signals to the degree you will in Australia.

Anyway, what will stop the rich countries mandating even greater tonnes of grain to be converted to fuel?
Indeed, if oil stays above US$100 biofuel producers will not need a mandate to source grain at price levels out of the reach of the urban poor.

We must advocate a halt to this conversion of grain to ethanol, soyabeans to bio diesel and instead encourage the rich countries to pull out all stops to find a way to satisfy their need for energy security with second generation biofuels.

A ‘stop’ is that the second generation biomass will be most economically sourced between the tropics where photosynthetic activity is greater and growing season longer than in the rich EU/USA.
To develop this energy source will need First World money and expertise and would indeed contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gasses but as it is not in their own backyard, it would not provide secure energy to the rich, nor the control to enable them to amass greater riches.

So the rich will convert food to fuel, the urban poor will starve and my questions from my previous post remain

Froggie, I think you'll find that the speculators, as with oil,
have already moved into the grains market, making things look
worse then they are. If shortages are what people are concerned
about, they are free to store extra, but of course nobody wants
to wear the cost.

Alot of our situation right now, is due to the huge subsidies
paid by the EU, US etc, which kept world grain prices artificially
low for years. Corn farmers in Mexico went out of business,
Indian farmers committed suicide en masse. Alot more food can
be grown in the third world itself, if prices cover the cost
of growing it, which recently they have not. I see Afgahnistan
is screaming for wheat and complaining about cost. Well of
course their farmers stopped growing wheat and switched to
poppies, which are far more profitable.

Geoff, I'm not quite sure which urban poor in which areas
you are thinking of. As Rojo notes, most grain is actually
fed to livestock, not directly to people.

Perhaps some of the urban poor, working in low wage
factories to produce goods for the West, will have to
be paid a little more, to cover their rising food costs.
Western consumers have had a dream run of cheap goods
for far too long.

You won't stop the crops for energy story. Already in
my district, people are building their own biodiesel
plant, growing canola and mustard to create biodiesel.
Never underestimate farmers in eventually helping themselves,
if they get screwed by the marketplace for long enough,
as they have been in the past.

The conversion of land for biofuels will prove to be a bigger problem than CO2 itself.The price of oil will continue to rise with another 900 million Chinese,hundreds of millions of Indians etc still waiting to join the industrial revolution.

The real influence of CO2 is just conjecture.The rate at which we are using fossil fuels will see a need in the near future to replace them.Pop control is basicly ingnored.The power of Multi-Nationals will see more land used for fuel and hence more world instability with increasing numbers of poor.The biofuels will never provide enough for our wants.

It will be interesting to see if the Oil campanies either try to stifle and then own and control the development of solar energy since they don't yet own what comes from our Sun.We could see Govts taxing solar cells on our properties.Now that could be construed as daylight robbery as in the past,when people in England were taxed according to the number of windows they had.You will see proof of this in many old buildings where to this day,you see windows bricked up.

Geoff “Just as mice plagues are built on a period of plenty, the urban poor have built their numbers through migration and reproduction on the back of cheap, available food.”

Highlights the elephant in the room, the problem of demand for food has a strong, positive correlation with the world population.

The solution is not a carbon tax and the “socialism by stealth” hiding behind the climate change lobby.

The solution will only be found in resolving the address population growth and reverse it to population decline.

I would note, a few might obviously observe the reversal of commercial and economic “growth” inherent in that suggestion (vis economic recession and deflation) and my response, a modest world population, living fulfilled lives, is infinitely better than apparent wealth created by economic growth founded on starvation and misery.

Certainly the spirits are out of the Pandora’s box in terms of bio-fuels. We cannot put them back. What was once considered as food stock now has a new market to compete in and the consequences are obvious and unavoidable.

I am certain additional alternatives to fossil fuels, which do not divert from food stocks, will emerge as creative and innovative individuals play with the possibilities but the risk is their innovative energy will not produce results in sufficient time to prevent widespread famine.

Global warming and carbon emissions are diversions from and consequences of the fundamental issue of population growth.

Famine is a function of insufficient food to support a given population.

In food market terms:

a lot was done to address and improve the food “supply” side of the equation in the 20th century.

Curtailing world population numbers is to merely put the same efforts into containing and reducing the demand side of the equation in the 21st century

Col: "The solution will only be found in resolving the address population growth and reverse it to population decline."

Do you have any suggestions on how you might curtail population growth apart from removing the baby bonus, nuking or starving them?

*Do you have any suggestions on how you might curtail population growth apart from removing the baby bonus, nuking or starving them?*

You start by finally addressing the question of giving every woman
on the planet, access to family planning.

Your big problem will be the Vatican. They will fight you all
the way, deny that we have a population problem and move
heaven and earth to stop you doing that. Their lobbying
tentacles are enormous, they want to outbreed the muslims
after all. Their influence goes right through the third
world.

But in the end, its going to be that, or its back to
genocide and similar, where nature will sort it all out.

Kind of sad but true.