Are We Willfully Ignoring the Food Crisis?

Is there any chance that the grain crisis is a trap set by Monsanto, waiting in the background to offer a desparate world a solution that they cannot turn down, but which will help their bid for a global food monopoly?

Does Monsanto currently have the level of influence needed to create this kind of global food crisis, and do they have something they could sell as a "solution"?

Fingering "the usual suspects" may not necessarily lead to the right culprits, but these are nonetheless questions worth considering.

The green party must take a stand against biofuels.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6hbT75_thXF6CI...

I agree entirely- sooner would be better, but there should at least be a resolution for the September convention. I'd be willing to be a signatory for such a resolution or could help write it- though it seems you are very well read on the topic.

My other post was more about food prices than biofuel technology, but the latter is certainly something we must address and I'll do so on this blog.

The biggest problem now with our policy and discussions on biofuels is that the term itself applies to a range of technologies, feed stocks, and applications that are all across the map as far as impacts and sustainability.

Therefore, to say either that we support or oppose biofuels is too simplistic.

For example, there is no reason in the world to support corn ethanol production, much less mandate content. We should make this very clear in policy.

At the other extreme, using waste vegetable oil from restaurants as biodiesel to power bus transit is about the wisest energy-from-waste application around. Most major cities could collect enough such waste fat within their own borders to fully power their bus fleet - not only saving fossil fuels & CO2 but also reducing smog emissions. WVO hybrid train engines pulling light rail could 'top up' as they arrive at each small community, with a central veg. oil collection/dropoff point located next to the station. Since restaurants currently have to pay to get rid of the stuff, they'd be happy to have a free disposal method.

We need policy to support such measures, while not ever implying that we should switch our entire current auto fleet to corn ethanol or biodiesel produced from virgin soya or canola. Sustainable liquid biofuel could support perhaps 5-10% of our current gasoline/diesel usage - but if we were diligent in switching to transit, reducing car size & weight, increasing engine efficiency, and re-tooling our communities to be walkable, cyclable, and transitable, then that would represent our total liquid fuel need. Which is to say, biofuels could sustainably supply all our needs if we reduced our total needs by a factor of 10 or more - which I believe can be done (in fact, it must under any scenario).

5 years ago, as a 'green' but not a 'Green', we bought a VW diesel bug because it was both affordable and very fuel efficient. Since then I have been able to supply it with biodiesel at times, from 5% up to 100%. My favourite supplier is Georgian Biofuels in nearby Owen Sound, who makes biodiesel (for cars or home heating) out of unused but expired vegetable oil. They are taking something that is otherwise hard to get rid of (you can't sell it for human consumption but you can't landfill it, so you have to pay to turn it into feed pellets and then sell it at cost) and using it to replace fossil fuel. No farmland was taken out of service or food diverted to make this biodiesel - it is guilt-free and virtually footprint-free. There are similar processors working to convert the vast surplus of rendered animal fat into biodiesel. (This fat used to be converted to feed, but new post-BSE policy bans feeding it back to livestock, so it accumulates, rancid, in huge storage tanks).

We need to craft a new policy that supports use of current sustainable biofuels and spurs research into future applications (e.g. cellulosic, algae) without unintentionally boosting zero-sum (at best) schemes like corn ethanol or clearing tropical rainforest to grow palm oil. And this policy needs to describe specific policies and actions, not just general supportive language. Blanket support for biofuels is wrong, but so is the "biofuels are evil" mantra that I hear from (for example) GP-PEI leader Sharon Labchuk. Perhaps a policy that mandated a more modest minimum content of 'sustainable' biofuels, instead of accepting anything refiners choose to blend in, would suffice. That could explicitly rule out corn ethanol, high-footprint imported tropical biodiesel, and other such potential hazards. That would leave the push for technologies that don't tip us into a morass of unintended consequences.

We should never forget that more sustainable pre-industrial or pre-fossil-fuel era farming was entirely powered by biofuels - grains fed to horses and oxen to provide power and transportation. This is also true of early public transit - like the horse-drawn carriages and omnibuses that preceeded modern taxis and streetcars. (Their wastes could also be fed back into the fuel or food stream through burning or fertilizing).

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie, ON

The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada - the same goes for all other people's posts & comments.

One thing that is apparent in the biofuel industry is that the major market push is actually for 'mature' technologies, such as corn ethanol or virgin soya biodiesel, rather than new or emerging ones such as algae or cellulosic. This is because most money comes from conventional investors who want something safe and predictable, not untried or risky. Most of the "R&D" going on in the mainstream biofuel industry is in how to refine these existing sub-par processes, how to market them, how to 'farm' subsidies, etc.

We need real R&D into the potentially sustainable technologies. The only way to do this will be through direct government subsidies, or skillfully designed market incentives that take the profit out of conventional biofuels (probably via ecological taxes) and steer more investment into alternatives which can still profit even under true-cost accounting.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie, ON

p.s. There is currently a proposal for a huge corn ethanol plant right in the middle of Barrie. During the recent provincial election, the other parties' candidates all took the "ethanol good, but not here" NIMBY stance, while I was the only one (backed by GPO leader Frank de Jong during his visit) to take the position that corn ethanol should not be produced anywhere. I'm not a booster of corn ethanol, but we'll have a more informed debate and earn more respect if we use the real numbers (including such aspects as feed byproducts) rather than wed ourselves to Pimentel's biased (inaccurate and out-of-date) calculations.

The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada - the same goes for all other people's posts & comments.

I just watched the "Hungry Planet" special on The National (http://tinyurl.com/56z5eo)

If the facts presented in the show are correct and there are only 60 days of global food stores available, then this is clearly not a distribution problem.

Financial, or direct food aid, while useful for the bottom billion will only make things worse for the developing world by increasing demand. Adding demand to demand does not increase supply.

The only way I can see to help is to increase supply or REDUCE demand. High prices are a powerful incentive to increase supply but that takes time. In the short term the only thing we could do to help is reduce demand.

If we really wanted to help the short term in a meaningful way, the only thing I could think of would be to initiate a national one day fast each week for a few months. Within a few weeks that might have a measurable impact. Although, I fear that even with our western consumption levels, our population is so small that we would be spitting into the wind. In the past it was not about eating less but sharing more. Sounds like both are required now.

High prices by themselves will encourage increased demand, we don't need to help with that. I think it is our role to think about tomorrow. The pressure for more industrial farming and more genetically modified high yield crops will be greater now then ever.

How do we answer that?

Thank you, Yes I understand that the 8 weeks of food stores represents the slack or buffer in the supply chain. This is down from the usual 18 weeks of stores. This change in supply is causing higher prices. If there was 10 weeks of food rotting in warehouses I would agree that it was a distribution problem.

At any rate I am not sure its useful to describe over-consumption here, and lack of production there, as a distribution problem.

From a public policy perspective I think over consumption here can best be addressed as a health issue. Is there any other way? We don't live in a country that can order people to eat less or to eat one food over another. Typically we would suppress demand by increasing the price with taxes but in this case we already have the market providing that pressure.

There are many reasons for under production in the developing world. In some cases it may be hard to tell if under production is a cause, an effect or both:
- war and civil conflict
- lack of adequate protection for private property
- lack of rule of law in general
- lagging infrastructure (roads, water management)
- unfair competition due to western subsidies
...to name just a few

Each of these requires its own response but I think we can assume that in the current situation high prices will encourage more production. Knowing as we do the wide environmental effects of agriculture what should we do as a nation or a party to ensure that this increased activity occurs with social justice and ecological sustainability?

Could we work within the WTO to reduce western farm subsidies? Do we increase our participation with UN development programs? Do we provide financial support to like minded industry groups in host countries? Should we lobby host country ministries to ensure that sustainability is near the top their agendas? Or do we pursue all of the above?

How we understand a problem leads a great deal of the way to the solution.

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"...most of all market failures stemming from greed or selfishness."

As I understand things farm subsidies in western nations have historically created artificially low food prices making it hard for the developing world to increase their own domestic production. Is this a market failure or a governance failure?

While greed may be at the root, I think it is unfair to call this solely a market failure. Should we try to prevent people asking for assistance from governments (justified or not) or should we expect that our elected officials be able to act prudently and in the public interest when responding to such requests?

Markets provide the singularly irreplaceable service of price discovery. It is the baby in the bath water that is at risk of being tossed out when markets, or capitalism in general, are blamed.

Much public policy utilizes market influencing instruments such as; interest rates, product specific taxes, industry subsidies. If markets are to be a major tool in our policy tool box shouldn't we try to understand and respect the valuable service they provide? Markets are not people nor institutions, they are more akin to gravity (imho).

"...Addressing underlying issues of fair trade would be the most effective long-term way to address these problems...."

Agreed. I would define fair trade in a broad sense. Fair trade not solely in terms of fair treatment of employees, but also in ensuring that corporations do not externalize expenses into the commons. When the true costs of a business activity are externalized it provides false market information. This effect is frequently found in cases of environmental degradation. For example "coal is cheap" unless of course the cost of global climate change is added back into the balance sheet.