Why We Face a Food Crisis
You may have heard of the recent riots around the world protesting sky-rocketing food prices. Of course, three of the top reasons for these unnecessarily high prices are agricultural subsidies, trade barriers, and the ethanol scam.
Paul Krugman writes a less than impressive column on the subject, but one passage is definitely worth highlighting:
The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”
This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.
And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.
Astounding. But sadly true.
Paul Ibrahim
in Regulation, Environment, Free Trade
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