Biofuels craze will cause famine

by Marcia Merry Baker

As of the end of Spring 2007 planting in the northern latitudes, the disastrous impact of the global bio-energy craze can be seen in the huge expansion of U.S. corn acreage, the plunge of world grain stocks, and price shocks all along the food chain internationally. Transportation systems, water supply, and other infrastructure are strained to the breaking point. Soil fertility itself is at stake. At the same time, speculation in grain futures on the Chicago Board of Trade is setting records. Furthermore, farmers are being herded into participating in "carbon trading" and other whacko money-schemes.

This is all part of the "Great Biofuels Bubble," which is a financial swindle causing vast harm. All the rhetoric about energy independence, aiding the environment, or "reviving" dying farm regions, is just a come-on. In reality, the conditions are laid for famine.

Three aspects of the biofuels craze show the dynamics of the threat to the food supply : 1) the extent of displacement of land and farm capacity from food into non-food production; 2) the context of low world stocks of grains and other staples; and 3) the present-day marginalization of farm regions, resulting from both decades of globalization, and today's "anti-global warming" swindles.

So far, the U.S. Congress and institutions of other leading food producing nations are casting a blind eye to food supply threats, in deference to the financial and agro-cartels involved in the stampede for bio-energy. Among the most prominent shocks to the food system to date is the corn-for-tortillas crisis in Mexico, where as of December 2006, prices had spiked 60%! In the United States and elsewhere, prices are soaring for livestock feed,cattle, chickens, and pigs.

In 2000, about 6% of U.S corn production went into ethanol. In 2005, this had jumped up to 14%. In 2006, 20% was converted into motor ethanol, the same percentage of production that typically has gone into U.S. corn exports in recent years. For 2007, the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture projection is that 27% of U.S. corn production will go to ethanol, and corn exports will decline to 19%. Some of the corn acreage expansion is taking land out of soybean and wheat plantings. The USDA estimates that U.S. soybean production this year might drop by 14% from last year, given the switch over to corn in some states, plus other factors.

The same kind of displacement process is hitting other crops around the globe. For example, Indonesia, and Malaysia are in the throes of a mad, cartel-led rush to supply palm-oil biodiesel to Europe. In recent years, these two countries accounted for 85% of the world's supply of crude
palm oil, a key part of which met the edible oil component of the Asian diet. But now, there is a diversion to biodiesel.

Malaysia has undergone so much deforestation for new palm oil plantations, that the nation is considered to have reached its land area limit for cultivated palm. So much new land in Indonesia is going into oil palms, or other biofuel related crops (sugar cane, jatropha), and so much of that is peatland, that gigantic clouds of smoke are created as the land is cleared and burned in preparation for palm planting.

On May 8, the United Nations released a report warning of the harmful impact of the biofuel craze on the food supply, and on poor populations. The document, "Sustainable Energy : A Framework for Decision makers," quantified the sweeping increases under way in bio-energy crop plantings of various kinds : palm oil, corn, sugar cane, and oil seeds, dislocating local practices, and taking over new land areas. While otherwise toeing the UN line supporting "alternative" energy for a "sustainable environment," the report states : "Use of large-scale mono-cropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and nutrient leaching. Even varied crops could have negative impacts if they replace wild forests or grasslands."

These biofuels-induced shifts in agriculture occur at a time of record low food reserves. Grain stocks per capita are at danger ratios. Overall, the UN estimates that there are some 850 million people short of food, up from 819 million 10 years ago, when the UN World Food Summit pledged to reduce hunger. Thus, given the low food reserves, and the radical biofuel crop shifts, a famine is set to happen if a bad weather episode or crop disease hits one of the world's breadbasket areas. The Australian wheat crop was cut by more than half from drought during the 2006-2007 crop season.

On the disease front, an outbreak long dreaded by wheat experts has occurred. Wheat stem rust, Puccinia graminis, has shown up in East Africa, after first appearing in Uganda in 1999. Dubbed Ug99, the disease has since spread to Kenya and Ethiopia, and as of late 2006 into Yemen, and now heading into south Asia. At least 25% of the world's wheat lies in the spread path of the fungus.

Why do farmers, most of whom "know better," go along with any of the biofoolery? They are trying to subsist and "adjust" under conditions of decades of low-cost globalization, instead of under policies serving national food security. Relative to their costs of production, farmers everywhere have been consistently "underpaid" for their output for decades, by the cartels dominating "free" (rigged) trade. U.S. family farms continue to operate, due to off-farm income.

Soil fertility itself is at stake. "No Soil, No Food, Or Fuel," is the title of an article in the May-June issue of Successful Farming, a U.S. farm periodical, which raises the question of what will happen to soil resources in the United States, given the ethanol boom. A companion article, "Saving Earth's Skin," opens, "Are we trading cheap oil for cheap soil? As industry rushes to grow more corn to feed fuel tanks as well as stomachs, that's a question many are asking." The danger referred to, is that if all biomass is constantly taken off the land, not just corn and wheat grain, but the corn stover, wheat straw, and switchgrass, then no biomatter is returned to the soil. "How long will it be before topsoil, the thin skin that supports terrestrial life on this planet, slowly begins to disappear?"

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