The author refers to PNG. PNG is self-sufficient in food. However, there is a deeply entrenched 60 000 year old culture in PNG that will not allow the large-scale co-operative farming that is required if PNG is to become a major exporter of food. It could be the bread-basket of Asia, growing every kind of fruit and vegetable one may imagine. It will not be able to become this because of deeply ingrained traditional cultural practices.

There is one other major problem not considered by the author. Water.Plants cannot do without it. India is now mining its fossil subterranean water supply so fast that it could run out in a couple of generations. So is Australia, but more slowly. And maybe so is China. In addition, add in changes in rainfall patterns because the Indian and Chinese atmospheric pollution is now beginning to be so great as to affect the weather, possibly to the point where the monsoon might fail for 1 or 2 years, and one has a horror story, not hope, at Australia's front door.

Any future agricultural project/policy for Asia needs to consider these imperatives.

I am pleased that someone can see a way forward from the mess created by the grain to ethanol madness. Politically driven, with little benefit for fuel security or the environment, the developed world has no problem in outbidding the poor for their food to turn it into fuel.

Modernising agriculture in the developing world as described in this article may help increase the supply to compensate for that taken for fuel but I see a few problems with this approach.

It will be too late to help the billions of people who are finding out that their food costs have suddenly doubled. For those whose food costs are greater than 50% of their income the only result is starvation. The US Congress and the European Parliament can chalk up one more ‘benefit’ to mankind.

Modernising agriculture in the developing world means a greater use of inputs. The developed world will also outbid the poor nations for these, increasing the price and so making a supply response in these countries all the more difficult. The rapid increase in the cost of N fertilizer due to increased demand and the price of oil is one such limitation on agricultural development in these countries.

Governments are already using such mechanisms as export taxes to ensure grain is available and affordable for their own people. Prices not tied to demand will not evoke the supply response needed to match the demand and so, again, agricultural development will be limited.

Perhaps the authors of this article would be better employed to advocate a halt a winding back of the ethanol to grain industry. The efforts of the agricultural scientists in the developing world might then come to something in a more measured way, free of this politically driven, subsidised and, in my opinion, immoral use of the developed world’s wealth.

Cellulose ethanol is potentially a much better story. It would be best if the authors encouraged the wealthy countries to develop this as soon as possible, make the technology available to the developing world and for the scientists to modernise agriculture around this industry.

*It will be too late to help the billions of people who are finding out that their food costs have suddenly doubled*

Geoff, I think that you miss the point. In the last decade, the
price of oil has gone from 10$ to 100$. Oil is a major part of
agriculture and cost of growing food. The real problem is that
food has been far too cheap for too long, distorted by huge
US and EU subsidies.

Now get used to it, unless it pays to grow food, people won't do
it.

What sub Saharan Africa needs is some good old family planning. I remind
you that its in these poorest parts of the globe, where women don't
have access to family planning, where 80 million extra people
are born a year. If you want to stop hunger in these areas,
more cheap boatloads of food won't do it for you,as it will simply
mean even more hungry babies!

Food and fuel are both about energy, so are interlinked. Thats the
reality.

If the world bank really wants to help people, start by giving
them choices about the size of their families, something that
hundreds of millions of women don't have right now.

Seeing that in exchange value up till recently the farm gate price of Australian wheat has hardly risen since WW2, while the price of bread had risen close on ten times, surely it is about time tne gate value of Australian farm products did rise.

Also please to remember that the Australian farmer right now is the only Western graingrower not subsidised.

Really not bad also that much Australian dryland grain cropping is grown on some of the poorest soils in the world, especially in WA.

As an old cockie, apologies for having a grizzle, but reckon it is about time.

Cheers - BB, WA

“What sub Saharan Africa needs is some good old family planning. I remind
you that its in these poorest parts of the globe, where women don't
have access to family planning, where 80 million extra people
are born a year. If you want to stop hunger in these areas,
more cheap boatloads of food won't do it for you, as it will simply
mean even more hungry babies!”
That comment by Yabby is worth repeating. A bit of coherence and common sense otherwise totally lacking in the debate so far. But it is not just Sub-Saharan Africa. Neither is access to family planning available to the majority of women in New Guinea, East Timor, The Solomons ---. The populations of these places are scorching ahead. India is awash with condoms, even stretching their use to the enhancement of road surfacing; but still the needs of Indian women for greater fertility control are not being sufficiently met.
Until do-gooders incorporate the above reality into their thinking, their deeds, their lobbying, world agricultural progress is just whistling in the wind – with or without biofuels. Indeed, rainbow-chasing.

Great game last night (if you live on the Central Coast).

Yabby, Bushbred, Colinsett, I was specifically critising firstly the mandating and subsidising of the biofuel industry and secondly the industry itself. I accept that high oil prices and the new wealth in Asia have pusher food prices higher but I think that agricultural productivity and expertise can moderate these price rises by increasing supply. The expansion of the biofuel industry cannot be accommodated as well.

I would love to see someone better qualified than I draw up a list of the pros and cons of converting grain to ethanol and see it in the media.
The western media has been very slow to pick up on the biggest story around--- that western nations are using taxpayers money to starve the poor (a bit extreme but I think factual).

Perhaps we could start such a list.
For--- Higher arable land prices and cropping incomes, US and EU farm subsidies more politically acceptable hidden behind mandates, marginal increases if fuel security, marginal or even negative benefits re greenhouse gases.
Against--- starving poor, civil unrest spilling across borders, degradation of environment by unstainable cropping by the hungry, the cost of building higher ‘walls’ around ourselves in the developed world.

Please add to these lists.

*The western media has been very slow to pick up on the biggest story around--- that western nations
are using taxpayers money to starve the poor (a bit extreme but I think factual).*

I don’t think its factual at all Geoff, as you are so busy reading one page, you
conveniently forget the rest of the book! Look at the big picture, not the
small picture.

Fact is that huge subsidies previously paid by the US, EU etc, have kept food
prices below the cost of production, so in many places people stopped growing
it. On top of that, they paid for set asides etc, to grow less crops. Dumping
their products in the third world also put many third world farmers out of
business.

The EU, US etc are now free to use those subsidies to help the starving, if that
is their choice. But if you want food production, you won’t get it unless its
price covers the cost of producing the stuff. That’s basic economics 101.

There are lots of options for the third world. Permaculture etc, would make
far more sense then Western agriculture, in many of these areas.

But you are pissing in the wind if you don’t address the population question
at the same time, no different to a puppy chasing its tail.

Ethanol, biodiesel etc, are only stage one of the biofuel story. Biofuel is not
just about cost, but also energy supply. Relying on a bunch of Arabs to
keep the wheels of the world’s economy ticking, was not the smartest move
by the West. At the moment, 1.5 Trillion $ is being transferred from energy
consumers to energy producers. Given that another 15 years and they will
simply buy the West, no need to fight at all.