It was hoped that the United Nations food summit in Rome would find ways to protect food supply against the threats of rising demands, unpredictable harvests and rising costs of fuel. Due to a difference of opinions on the part of delegates, that looks unlikely to happen. According to the BBC, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts that the cost of rice, corn and wheat rising by 50% within the next ten years, whilst the UN reckons that production of basic food stuffs must increase by 50% by 2050 to meet demand.
The summit has run into problems over the issue of ethanol and biofuels, which some delegates believe utilise the increasingly scarce resources needed to produce food for the poorest nations. The UN estimates that 850 million people worldwide suffer directly from shortages of food, with a 820 million of those people living in less economically developed countries.
Lula da Silva, the Brazilian President, batted off criticism of his country's production of ethanol, criticism which has escalated thanks to the global food crises. Da Silva defended ethanol production and condemned the granting of excessive subsidies and the manufacture of biofuels derived from food crops. In a speech he defined his country's production of ethanol against North America's, claiming that the states produced 'bad ethanol' which 'comes with the fat of the subsidies.'
Whereas America produces corn-based ethanol Brazil manufactures its ethanol from sugar, and Da Silva argued that the difference between the two is significant enough to distinguish discussions on the impacts of such fuel from focusing on ethanol per se. For one, the production of sugar based ethanol is far more fuel efficient than that of corn based types, as it yields over 8 times as much energy as the fossil energy used to produce it. Corn based ethanol yields just 1.5 times as much.
Against the charge that such production takes place on land which would otherwise be used to grow food for domestic consumption, or worse, land that has been cleared from forests, Da Silva cited USDA reports which show that just 1% of all arable land in Brazil is used for the production of sugar-cane ethanol, and of that only a tiny percentage (0.3%) occurs in northern Brazil, where deforestation is at its worse. Ethanol, Da Silva claimed, has the potential to alleviate rising food prices, and should be embraced in countries which have comparable problems to Brazil.
Related posts
Posted under Articles, Environmental News
This post was written by Matthew Gammie on June 6, 2008