Monday, May 05, 2008
Editorial: When fuel competes with food
America needs to rethink an energy policy that puts too much hope in biofuels. They are not a panacea for overconsumption.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Feed our cars or feed our children.
The choice is not so stark for Americans -- at least not yet. But around the globe, families in the poorest nations are finding themselves priced out of the food market, in part because of new competition for corn between food and fuel producers.
Hunger is destabilizing governments, prompting President Bush last week to ask Congress for another $770 million in emergency foreign food assistance. That would bring the total to $2.6 billion in the next budget year.
Extra aid is needed, and should be delivered as quickly as possible. But the world's food-producing nations also need to look urgently for solutions to the broad problems that have fed the current crisis.
In the U.S., the soul-searching might start with the proposition: We can feed our cars or feed the world's children.
As more corn is sold to ethanol plants, the competition is being felt through the food chain. Farmers are paying more for livestock feed. Food manufacturers are paying more for such common ingredients as cornstarch and corn syrup -- and eggs. The cost of feeding chickens ain't chicken feed anymore.
U.S. consumers are paying more for meat and processed food made with corn products -- and for bread. Wheat prices are up because farmers are growing less of it so they can grow more corn.
And the day laborer in Mauritania, featured recently in The Washington Post, slaughtered the she-goat that provided milk to his family so that they could eat for a few more days. He could no longer afford to buy food at all.
The expanding global food crisis cannot be blamed solely on a flawed U.S. energy policy. Many factors have come together to create the current food price shock. But an energy policy that demands too little in the way of conservation, and depends too much on alternative sources, is playing a part.
Biofuels are supposed to be the painless answer to America's gluttonous energy consumption.
The U.S. can grow corn. So Washington, in bipartisan fashion, has mandated the use of mainly corn-based ethanol in motor fuel. Naysayers warned that food prices would rise dramatically as a result, but the politics of ethanol have been too sweet to resist.
Home-grown corn is supposed to wean America from its dependence on foreign oil. The competition was supposed to ease prices at the gas pump. Ethanol was to be the "green" alternative to fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. And farmers were to have a lucrative new market for their corn crops.
Ethanol's benefits were grossly oversold. Except to grain farmers. They are doing very well.
