Biofuels Vs. Food
May 25th, 2007
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With the increasing political instability in the Arab world and the galloping oil prices, there has been increasing emphasis on biofuels to meet the growing energy needs of the world. Even the Bush administration., a key supporter of Big Oil wants to move towards an era of bio fuels and energy Independence.
However, a new U.N report points out that while biofuels might save the environment, they can cause something far worse: Hunger.
The global rush to switch from oil to energy derived from plants will drive deforestation, push small farmers off the land and lead to serious food shortages and increased poverty unless carefully managed, says the most comprehensive survey yet completed of energy crops….The UN warns: “Where crops are grown for energy purposes the use of large scale 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.”[link]
No doubt, biofuels offer an exciting new source of energy. However, their potential to replace oil is limited. In United States for example, where the main source of production is corn, they can at best provide 15% of American energy needs. And as a recent New York Times article pointed out, they may even cause short term increase in oil prices.
Should the world look beyond biofuels?
Update: Is the alternate energy push a bubble?
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3 Responses to “Biofuels Vs. Food”
Sabarish Sasidharan May 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pm #
As if all these bad effects didn’t happen in the course of normal agriculture… My grandpa can remember so many varieties of bananas some of which are permanently lost to us. So we lost many species of bananas when cultivating bananas all the while ! And how about rice? We had so many varieties of rice which are now lost to us.
Kiran June 13th, 2007 at 10:15 am #
We have more agricultural land available in the world than needed to provide food for all the population. Most of it is currently being wasted due to mismanagement, price cartels and ofcourse, agricultural subsidies.
Land is one of the primary resource that developing countries have to earn revenue and foreign exchange. They are not able to do that currently due to stupid agricultural subsidies.
The argument that biofuels produce food shortage has no water at all.
Policy Wise » Global Warming Can Trigger Hunger in India August 16th, 2007 at 11:40 am #
[...] As economists David Piemental and Mario Giampetro had concluded in their Food, Land, Population, and the US economy, by 2050, if the current level of growth in US population is maintained, even America will find it difficult to feed its population which will have a huge impact on global food security. Their report came out in 1994 when the global warming debate was largely restricted to avant-garde environmentalists. And there is the problem of bio-fuels. [...]