Fueling Famine

Few understand the global food crisis better than Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the UN World Food Programme. Below are excerpts from a Newsweek interview with Sheeran in which she outlines the pernicious link between world oil prices and global famine:

What is the primary factor driving this surge in prices?

"The number one factor I look at is the price of oil. It may seem a strange thing, as I'm in the hunger field, but I wake up every morning and start in the back of the paper and I look at the price of oil, because if the price of oil stays high or goes higher, I know that the energy buyers in food markets will be buying food as an energy input at a very expensive price. That is the world we are in now that is new."

Are you saying that because people are buying ethanol—

"The demand for food as an input into energy production, whether it's biodiesel or bioethanol or any of these, is a global phenomenon. And it affects everything from palm oil to cassava to everything else … There isn't much marginal room in the global food supply system. We've been consuming more food than we produce for the last three years. "

"We" meaning the world?

"Yes, we the world. Now, there's a point at which it doesn't economically make sense to buy food as an energy input. It's pretty low; it's apparently when oil hits about $70 a barrel. So anything above that makes food a very viable energy production input."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/132013

Biofuels a Crime Against Humanity?

The developing world has landed in a full-blown, food crisis. It's the result of the combination of crop failures and soaring food prices. What that means is that, if the world's poor can find food, they often can't afford to buy it.

This is a global problem, afflicting the poor on virtually every continent on our planet. Even Mexico brought food riots to North America. From Haiti to Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to Afghanistan, masses are facing the scourge of malnutrition, even famine.

Much of the problem is man-made, mainly due to climate-change related crop failures (droughts/floods), increased demand for feed grain to supply the growing demand for meat products in the emerging industrial economies and diversion of crops for the production of biofuels.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the food crisis lately, an awful lot of talk but precious little in the way of effective action. The World Bank is calling for the developed countries to put up half a trillion dollars for immediate food aid. Some nations are calling for the International Monetary Fund to make emergency loans to hard hit countries (great, if they can't afford to buy food, lend them money they won't be able to repay).

There is also a growing demand to scrap grain-based biofuel production.

"'If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries, including Africa, but not only Africa, will be horrific,' IMF managing director Dominque Struass-Kahn said at a press conference.

"Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will suffer from malnutrition, with consequences on all of their lives."

That level of concern didn't translate into pledges for more food aid or concrete ideas about how food inflation might be reversed.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn said some ministers told him that using foodstuffs to make fuel amounted to a "crime against humanity."

Update:

The Bush administration, big time backer of corn-based ethanol, has announced that it's very concerned about the growing global food crisis. Spokesfemme Dana Perino said Bush is looking at new approaches such as buying more of the food needed for assistance from sources close to needy countries. Great, the US is going to compete with locals for already limited food stocks which should drive up the price putting food out of reach for even more people.

If Bush is sincere (and wouldn't that be a first?), he ought to announce an end to the corn-based ethanol scam.