Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries
Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels
By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Re****ter of the Sun | April 25, 2008
The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food
crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as
substitutes for fossil fuels
Corn is harvested at Morris, Ill. in September 2007.
With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has
broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several
countries have blocked the ex****t of grain. There is even talk that
governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.
One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government
subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated
30% of America's corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.
"I don't think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the
run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial," a
professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C.
Ford Runge, said. A study by a Wa****ngton think tank, the International
Food
Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of
the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.
Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article
in
Foreign Affairs, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor."
"We were criticized for being alarmist at the time," Mr. Runge said. "I
think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative."
Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on
foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to
fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for
ethanol's
prospects.
"It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol," Mr.
Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. "It's not
going to be a very good diet but that's roughly enough to keep an adult
person alive for a year."
Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore,
need
to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarni****ng the effort against
global warming. "Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They,
in
fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that,
somebody
ought to ask him," the professor said. "There are lots of solutions, real
solutions to climate change. We need to get to those."
Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis,
according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore's public campaign
to
address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to
comment for this article.
However, the scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore,
Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel of
Climate
Change, has warned that climate campaigners are unwise to promote biofuels
in a way that risks food supplies. "We should be very, very careful about
coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of
food grains and may have an implication for overall food security," Mr.
Pachauri told re****ters last month, according to Reuters. "Questions do
arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert
corn into sugar then into biofuels, into ethanol."
In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his sup****t for corn-based
ethanol, but endorsed moving to what he called a "third generation" of
so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory
research. "It doesn't compete with food crops, so it doesn't put pressure
on
food prices," the former vice president told Popular Mechanics magazine.
A Harvard professor of environmental studies who has advised Mr. Gore,
Michael McElroy, warned in a November-December 2006 article in Harvard
Magazine that "the production of ethanol from either corn or sugar cane
presents a new dilemma: whether the feedstock should be devoted to food or
fuel. With increasing use of corn and sugar cane for fuel, a rise in
related
food prices would seem inevitable." The article, "The Ethanol Illusion"
went
so far as to praise Senator McCain for summing up the corn-ethanol energy
initiative launched in the United States in 2003 as "highway robbery
perpetrated on the American public by Congress."
In Britain, some hunger-relief and environmental groups have turned
sharply
against biofuels. "Setting mandatory targets for biofuels before we are
aware of their full impact is madness," Philip Bloomer of Oxfam told the
BBC.
Biofuel advocates say they are being made a bogeyman for a food crisis
that
has much more to do with record oil prices, surging demand in the
developing
world, and unusual weather patterns. "The people who seek to solely blame
ethanol for the food crisis and the rising price of food that we see
across
the globe are taking a terribly simplistic look at this very complex
issue,"
Matthew Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association said.
Mr. Hartwig said oil companies and food manufacturers are behind the
attempt
to undercut ethanol. "There is a concerted misinformation campaign being
put
out there by those people who are threatened by ethanol's growing
prominence
in the marketplace," he said.
The most obvious impact the food crisis has had in America, aside from
higher prices, is the imposition of rationing at some warehouse stores to
deal with a spike in demand for large quantities of rice, oil, and flour.
The CEO of Costco Wholesale Corp., James Sinegal, is blaming press hype
for
the buying limits, which were first re****ted Monday in The New York Sun.
"If it hadn't been picked up and become so prominent in the news, I doubt
that we would have had the problems that we're having in trying to limit
it
at this point," Mr. Sinegal told Fox News Thursday. "I mean, I can't
believe
the amount of attention that is being paid to this."
The Sun's article, which came as food riots were re****ted abroad,
circulated
quickly on the Internet, was republished in newspapers as far away as
India,
and prompted local and network television stories.
Speaking in Kansas City, Mo., yesterday, the federal agriculture
secretary,
Edward Schafer, blamed emotion for the spurt of rice buying at warehouse
stores. "We don't see any evidence of the lack of availability of rice.
There are no supply issues," he told re****ters, according to Reuters.
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