Food or Fuel?
Last year approximately 100,000 tons of grain was used to make biological fueI.
I love the colour green, but I love a fresh loaf of bread more.
1 Swiss Frank per day, per person.
Worldwide at least a billion people must live on this amount. That hardly pays for basic food.
The price for grain is exploding because it is being used for bio fuel.
The price of rice rose by 75% in the last two monthes. The price of corn rose over the last twelve monthes by 120%. One of the causes being merchant speculation.
It takes 200 kilo of corn to manufacture enough Ethanol to fill a 95 Liter tank. With this amount of corn a person could feed themselves for a year.
2102 Million tones of grain was harvested in the world in 2007. Half of it was used for animal food and biological fuel.
Work the rest of it out for yourselves.
Can we let this go on?
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From this point of view this whole ethanol things sounds like vanity, in a marie antoinette kind of way……
Spaz - April 22, 2008 at 1:27 am
You have my vote for “food” – it’s one of the most idiotic “green” ideas to produce biofuel when half the planet doesn’t have enough to eat.
Good post.
James Steerforth - April 22, 2008 at 10:20 am
Hi Spaz,
Thought you were taking a break?
I agree it is very Marie-Antoinettish,but then is ethanol digestable?
diamondsandrust - April 22, 2008 at 10:50 am
Hello James,
Thanks for looking in.
I go along with green but too much is idealism from impractical dreamers. D
diamondsandrust - April 22, 2008 at 11:01 am
I am taking a break writing blog (although I did add another post yesterday) but that of course does not mean, that I don’t follow up with my favourite blog!!!!
re digestible, I thought it made pop corn?
spaz - April 22, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I agree that green is good, but biofuel is not green. Apparently deforestation, e.g. in Brazil and Indonesia, is also speeding up because of this latest economic craze.
James Steerforth - April 23, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“Man has been endowed with reason,so he can add to what he has been given.
But up to now he hasn’t been a creator only a destroyer.
Forests keep disappearing,rivers dry up,wild life becomes extinct,the climates ruined,and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.”
Anton Chekhov.
Uncle Vanya 1897
And we still havn’t learned.
Thankyou both for your comments
diamondsandrust - April 24, 2008 at 1:50 pm
It seems like such a waste to use grain for fuel when so many people in the world go to bed hungry at the end of each day.
I once saw a documentary on american dairy farms that showed the government paying farmers to dump thousands of litres of milk down the drain to balance milk prices.
When asked why it couldn’t be turned into milk powder & given free to 3rd world countries, a politician replied with complete apathy “It would affect our economy too much”
Lives or Money???
That’s an easy one to answer, the Money God wins every time….
Tasmaniac - April 24, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Developing countries account for most of the production of food. As these countries become more industrialized, production of food has steadily slowed. Globalism and greed are the real culprits here. What we have to do is to revive the agricultural sector in these countries.
leafless - April 25, 2008 at 3:06 am
I am so outraged by this. It should be unacceptable in a civilised world, but sadly it isn’t. Tasmaniac is 100% correct – it’s all about the money. Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up and saying:’I've had enough.’
Selma - April 25, 2008 at 11:05 am
Hi Tamaniac.You are so right.First they breed cows to yield unatural amounts of milk and then they throw it away,here the government even subsidise the farmers.Who said money was the root of all evil?
diamondsandrust - April 25, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Thanks for your comment leafless.I read something the other day that stated that Africa was completely capable of feeding itself and even exporting food if they had adequate roads to transport it in the right directions.The trouble is the colonials only built roads to the ports and nobody has built any new ones.Thus good food perishes at the markets.
diamondsandrust - April 25, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hi Selma,It makes me so mad too. We “foot soldiers”from all over the world can see what they are doing wrong but we can’t stop them.
By the way,if I make it down under some time I won’t forget your chocolate.
diamondsandrust - April 25, 2008 at 6:37 pm