Latin America Divided Over Ethanol

[Robbien]

Source: Christian Science Monitor

U.S. Efforts To Promote Alternative Fuel Have Caused Food Price Increases In Region

This article was written by Sara Miller Llana.

"We're not against biofuels. They are viable alternatives, as long as they don't negatively affect the lives of the inhabitants of the region." Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez calls the boom in ethanol the equivalent of starving the poor "to feed automobiles."

. . .

Now poultry industry executives, who have seen the price of feedstock go up; Mexican consumers, facing a 60 percent jump in the cost of tortillas; and even environmentalists, who look at the amount of fertilizer that will be needed to grow extra crops, are wondering aloud whether ethanol will help or hurt Latin American economies.

The South American energy summit that concluded in Venezuela this week provided the latest platform for critics. Even though the debate has been cast as another issue in the long line of ideological battles aligning Chávez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro against the U.S., some analysts say that their point is larger than political: If the price for staple food items rises across the globe because of demand, Latin America will be one of the hardest-hit regions.

"I think people worry that rich Americans are trying to fuel cars at the expense of hungry people in poorer countries," says Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. "This increased push for ethanol production could be an incredible foreign policy blunder."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/20/world/main2709604.shtml

[gorbal]

1. This is the part that struck my eye-

His words follow mass protests in Mexico, after the price of corn tortillas shot up in January. The South American Energy Summit at Margarita Island was the first meeting between Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since Chávez lambasted the plan after Mr. Bush visited Brazil last month, when Bush and Lula signed a proposal to promote the industry in the region.

[gorbal]

2. Also this-

By January, angry Mexicans took to the streets to protest the rising cost of tortillas, the central part of most Mexicans' diet. While many factors contributed to the ballooning Mexican corn industry, U.S. prices are reflected on the international market, Mr. Westhoff says.

Mexico has reacted most strongly to higher food prices, but it could be the beginning of protests across the world. The food vs. fuel debate poses questions about the management and beneficiaries of resources, says Celso Garrido, an economist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico.

"Mexico gets great quantity of corn from the U.S. This will have an impact on the basket of food for the population in Mexico," he says. "It seems that Mexico requires a policy to look at the impact of transferring food to energy."

[Rydz777]

3. NAFTA

"Mexico gets a great quantity of corn from the U.S." NAFTA promoted the import of US grown corn into Mexico and wrecked the traditional livelihood of the campesinos. Facing starvation, they headed "al Norte" to find whatever menial work they could. Now that Mexican agriculture is broken, the price of imported corn goes up. NAFTA has been a disaster on both sides of the border.

[seafan]

4. But Jeb asserts that ethanol prod'n won't threaten food supplies and claims tariffs to be slashed...

Jeb Bush has been hard at work behind the scenes on the ethanol push. Since April, 2006, Jeb has been pushing George to get more interested in ethanol. In January of 2007, it finally worked, and we all saw George flitting about the US and Latin America with a *mission* to sell.



Latin America Divided Over Ethanol, April 22, 2007

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez calls the boom in ethanol the equivalent of starving the poor "to feed automobiles."
Ethanol, which is derived from crops such as corn or sugar, is seen by some as a green alternative, a rising star on the path toward reducing independence on foreign petroleum. But it's not just Mr. Chávez who is questioning whether the benefits outweigh the unintended consequences.

Now poultry industry executives, who have seen the price of feedstock go up; Mexican consumers, facing a 60 percent jump in the cost of tortillas; and even environmentalists, who look at the amount of fertilizer that will be needed to grow extra crops, are wondering aloud whether ethanol will help or hurt Latin American economies.

.....

The South American energy summit that concluded in Venezuela this week provided the latest platform for critics. Even though the debate has been cast as another issue in the long line of ideological battles aligning Chávez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro against the U.S., some analysts say that their point is larger than political: If the price for staple food items rises across the globe because of demand, Latin America will be one of the hardest-hit regions.

"I think people worry that rich Americans are trying to fuel cars at the expense of hungry people in poorer countries," says Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. "This increased push for ethanol production could be an incredible foreign policy blunder."
What we are seeing now, she says, is the beginning of a very long debate. Chávez's comments came shortly after harsh op-eds penned by Mr. Castro who, in his first public statements since falling ill last July, resurfaced to call the U.S. proposal "genocidal."

His words follow mass protests in Mexico, after the price of corn tortillas shot up in January. The South American Energy Summit at Margarita Island was the first meeting between Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since Chávez lambasted the plan after Mr. Bush visited Brazil last month, when Bush and Lula signed a proposal to promote the industry in the region.
For this meeting, Chávez nuanced his position — saying he is not against ethanol production but against the U.S. plan to use corn to produce it.

.....

Mexico has reacted most strongly to higher food prices, but it could be the beginning of protests across the world. The food vs. fuel debate poses questions about the management and beneficiaries of resources, says Celso Garrido, an economist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico.
"Mexico gets great quantity of corn from the U.S. This will have an impact on the basket of food for the population in Mexico," he says. "It seems that Mexico requires a policy to look at the impact of transferring food to energy."

.....

But then, Jeb quietly went to Brazil last week, on April 16, 2007, touting his belief that the ethanol market will double in five years....


Also, he proclaimed while he was there, that

...he believes the trade barriers in the international ethanol market would be phased out. He said the U.S. is likely to slash tariff on ethanol from Brazil, the top exporter of the renewable fuel.

The U.S. government currently charges 0.54 U.S. dollars for each gallon of ethanol imported from Brazil.

How much do we want to bet that BIG OIL will have something to say about that?


And, whaddyaknow, he also asserted: "Ethanol no threat to food supplies!"

U.S. President George W. Bush's brother Jeb Bush said on Tuesday that an increase in Brazilian ethanol output will not necessarily threaten international food supplies.

We are convinced that Brazil is capable of increasing its production of sugar and ethanol from sugarcane without threatening food supplies, Bush said.

He also told Brazilian legislators that he expects U.S. government to reduce or eliminate its 2.5 percent tariff on ethanol in several years and ethanol to become a key product on the international biofuel market. The United States hopes to create a "robust world market" for alternative fuels, Bush said..

The former governor of Florida state made the remarks during a visit to the Brazilian Congress in response to the boycott by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro of a deal aimed at raising the production of ethanol worldwide as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Castro and Chavez, leaders of Cuba and Venezuela, said they were concerned that people might starve if more agricultural land is used to produce crops for energy instead of food.

Bush argued that increased production of ethanol might cause problems in countries like USA that use corn as the raw material but Brazil is immunized as it makes ethanol from sugarcane. He also said that the U.S. government intends to invest 1.6 billion U.S. dollars to address the problems.

.....

Who else is wondering which *problem solvers* will get the payoff from our $1.6 billion in tax dollars?



We will be dealing with food and water wars faster than we know if we do not remove the imperialists from our government.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Yup, Lulu made a boo-boo for sure, in his deal with our Chief Boob.

But Lulu's not a bad guy. Labor background, former steelworker; and walking a tightrope between advocacy for the poor and workers, on the one hand--the overwhelming leftists (majorityist) trend in South America--and the teeth and claws that global corporate predators still have in that region, and the ever-present threat of dirty and violent intervention by the Bush Junta.

Some background is needed to understand this dispute. FoodFirst.org has an excellent study on the devastating impacts on the environment and the poor from biofuel production. And, more than this, there is the political context, which I would summarize this way: I strongly suspect that the Bushites had a plot to kill Chavez, based in Colombia (a plot that may have involved other assassinations as well, and destabilization of the Andean democracies--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador). That plot was disclosed by the former head of Colombian intelligence, in the huge scandal that has broken in Colombia involving rightwing paramilitary drug trafficking, and mass murder of union organizers, leftists and peasants, with ties to the top echelons of the Uribe government (Bush's pal) and the Colombian military, on whom Bush has larded $4 billion in US military aid (our tax dollars). This was the context for Bush's recent visit to South America. Bush was at a great disadvantage, and he got publicly lectured by Latin American leaders, from Brazil to Mexico, on left and right, about the SOVEREIGNTY of Latin American countries. I think these leaders know what the Bushites were up to, with the Colombian paramilitaries, and I also think, as a result, they put a condition on Bush's visit--no Chavez bashing.

Last year, another leftist, socialist Michele Batchelet, first woman president of Chile (who suffered torture under the US-backed dictator Pinochet), got pressured--by Condi Rice, I believe--to have Chile abstain in Venezuela's bid for a UN Security Council seat. Chile abstained; Venezuela lost the vote; Panama was the compromise. That was then. Things were iffy then as to Bush Junta power, how things would go in elections in Venezuela, Ecuador and other countries, the viability of Bolivarian ideas like the Bank of the South and Mercosur (So. American trade group), and the plot against Chavez was still boiling beneath the surface. Also, Bush had just appointed John "death squad" Negroponte as Undersec of State for Latin America. So Batchelet hedged her bets. But she has paid a political price for this--for NOT supporting Venezuela, when things were still touch and go. Her own ambassador to Venezuela publicly criticized her for it, recently. Things have changed. Chavez won big. His compadre, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won big (and just won a referendum on re-writing the constitution, with an astounding 82% of the vote). Daniel Ortega was elected in Nicaragua (take THAT, Negroponte!). Argentina has become a success story--after easy term Venezuelan loans bailed them out of World Bank/IMF debt (the core of the Bank of the South). And, partly because of Argentina's recovery, Mercosur is becoming a powerhouse, and has begun talk of a South American "Common Market" and common currency (to get off the US dollar).

Bush visited, of course, to try to "divide and conquer" all of this (and who knows for what other nefarious purposes? --to check in with his death squads in Colombia and see what he could do to keep the torture and massacre scene going? to eliminate witnesses to Bushite involvement?; to get a list of whistleblowers, and courageous prosecutors and judges for the CIA?). This is the context in which Lula da Silva ("Lulu")--leader of the biggest country and biggest economy in So. America--was dickering with Bush about biofuel production. Bear in mind that Lulu made an extraordinary gesture of friendship toward Chavez, by visiting him for a big ceremonial opening of the new Orinoco Bridge, two weeks before the Venezuelan election (and not long after Chavez's "devil" remark at the UN). Lulu's gesture could not have been more pointed. He is no enemy of Chavez. And, further, I think he is a solid member of this new Latin American consensus about US interference in Latin America.

Lulu is also wily--a very shrewd politician. The negotiation conditions were prime for a deal favoring Brazil. And I think he took that opportunity. I think he was wrong. No question about it. Biofuel production is ruinous. For one thing, it will mean MORE loss of the Amazon forest--one of the bulwarks against CO2 pollution of the atmosphere. And it is directly harming the poor all over the south and the world. But he couldn't resist. Like many politicians--especially ones with vast poor populations--he may be trapped into thinking only of short-term economic gain. In any case, while the nature of the deal dismays me, I can't help but be glad that a South American country had it over Bush and his Cartel--was in a position to bargain--and I hope Lulu used it well, for the benefit of his people, short-term or not. It's kind of like siding with auto workers (the "little guy") in a strike--the ultimate product harms the environment, but the damned things are going to be manufactured anyway, and the only real option is siding with the workers.

This deal appears to be the ONLY "deliverable" from Bush to his corporate puppetmasters--and the only bit of "divide and conquer" he could manage. Uruguay (another leftist government--the one I thought might defect) turned him down, and stuck with Mercosur. And, in the end, it may well be Venezuelan initiatives like the Bank of the South, and its activism in Mercosur, that bails Brazil out of this mistake. What's very clear, in the Bush/Lulu story, is that Latin American countries have NEW POWER in dealing with global corporate predators and death squad promoters, BECAUSE of Venezuela's stubbornness, independence and new vision for Latin America.

This dispute over biofuel production--and its impacts on the environment and on the poor--will be resolved. Many small farmers and environmentalists/human rights activists in Brazil oppose it. It may fail of its own accord. It will likely be a disaster--and become an example of what NOT to do--and won't be repeated. Latin American unity and self-determination is a more important long term issue, because without them Latin Americans will not be able to protect anyone or anything.

[Mika]

6. Great in-depth article on the subject here

Where Have All the Bees Gone? And Other Reflections on the Internationalization of Genocide
by Fidel Castro
http://www.counterpunch.org/castro04072007.html

The Camp David meeting has just come to an end. All of us followed the press conference offered by the presidents of the United States and Brazil attentively, as we did the news surrounding the meeting and the opinions voiced in this connection.

Faced with demands related to customs duties and subsidies which protect and support US ethanol production, Bush did not make the slightest concession to his Brazilian guest at Camp David.

President Lula attributed to this the rise in corn prices, which, according to his own statements, had gone up more than 85 percent.

Before these statements were made, the Washington Post had published an article by the Brazilian leader which expounded on the idea of transforming food into fuel.

It is not my intention to hurt Brazil or to meddle in the internal affairs of this great country. It was in effect in Rio de Janeiro, host of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, exactly 15 years ago, where I delivered a 7-minute speech vehemently denouncing the environmental dangers that menaced our species' survival. Bush Sr., then President of the United States, was present at that meeting and applauded my words out of courtesy; all other presidents there applauded, too.

No one at Camp David answered the fundamental question. Where are the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals which the United States, Europe and wealthy nations require to produce the gallons of ethanol that big companies in the United States and other countries demand in exchange for their voluminous investments going to be produced and who is going to supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower and rape seeds, whose essential oils these same, wealthy nations are to turn into fuel, going to be produced and who will produce them?

Some countries are food producers which export their surpluses. The balance of exporters and consumers had already become precarious before this and food prices had skyrocketed. In the interests of brevity, I shall limit myself to pointing out the following:

According to recent data, the five chief producers of corn, barley, sorghum, rye, millet and oats which Bush wants to transform into the raw material of ethanol production, supply the world market with 679 million tons of these products. Similarly, the five chief consumers, some of which also produce these grains, currently require 604 million annual tons of these products. The available surplus is less than 80 million tons of grain.

This colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel production -and these estimates do not include data on oily seeds-shall serve to save rich countries less than 15 percent of the total annual consumption of their voracious automobiles.

At Camp David, Bush declared his intention of applying this formula around the world. This spells nothing other than the internationalization of genocide.

In his statements, published by the Washington Post on the eve of the Camp David meeting, the Brazilian president affirmed that less than one percent of Brazil's arable land was used to grow cane destined to ethanol production. This is nearly three times the land surface Cuba used when it produced nearly 10 million tons of sugar a year, before the crisis that befell the Soviet Union and the advent of climate changes.

Our country has been producing and exporting sugar for a longer time. First, on the basis of the work of slaves, whose numbers swelled to over 300 thousand in the first years of the 19th century and who turned the Spanish colony into the world's number one exporter. Nearly one hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which had been denied full independence by US interventionism, it was immigrants from the West Indies and illiterate Cubans alone who bore the burden of growing and harvesting sugarcane on the island. The scourge of our people was the off-season, inherent to the cyclical nature of the harvest. Sugarcane plantations were the property of US companies or powerful Cuban-born landowners. Cuba, thus, has more experience than anyone as regards the social impact of this crop.

This past Sunday, April 1, CNN televised the opinions of Brazilian experts who affirm that many lands destined to sugarcane have been purchased by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

As part of my reflections on the subject, published on March 29, I expounded on the impact climate change has had on Cuba and on other basic characteristics of our country's climate which contribute to this.

On our poor and anything but consumerist island, one would be unable to find enough workers to endure the rigors of the harvest and to care for the sugarcane plantations in the ever more intense heat, rains or droughts. When hurricanes lash the island, not even the best machines can harvest the bent-over and twisted canes. For centuries, the practice of burning sugarcane was unknown and no soil was compacted under the weight of complex machines and enormous trucks. Nitrogen, potassium and phosphate fertilizers, today extremely expensive, did not yet even exist, and the dry and wet months succeeded each other regularly. In modern agriculture, no high yields are possible without crop rotation methods.

On Sunday, April 1, the French Press Agency (AFP) published disquieting reports on the subject of climate change, which experts gathered by the United Nations already consider an inevitable phenomenon that will spell serious repercussions for the world in the coming decades.

According to a UN report to be approved next week in Brussels, climate change will have a significant impact on the American continent, generating more violent storms and heat waves and causing droughts, the extinction of some species and even hunger in Latin America.

The AFP report indicates that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forewarned that at the end of this century, every hemisphere will endure water-related problems and, if governments take no measures in this connection, rising temperatures could increase the risks of mortality, contamination, natural catastrophes and infectious diseases.

In Latin America, global warming is already melting glaciers in the Andes and threatening the Amazon forest, whose perimeter may slowly be turned into a savannah, the cable goes on to report.

Because a great part of its population lives near the coast, the United States is also vulnerable to extreme natural phenomena, as hurricane Katrina demonstrated in 2005.
According to AFP, this is the second of three IPCC reports which began to be published last February, following an initial scientific forecast which established the certainty of climate change.

This second 1400-page report which analyzes climate change in different sectors and regions, of which AFP has obtained a copy, considers that, even if radical measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that pollute the atmosphere are taken, the rise in temperatures around the planet in the coming decades is already unavoidable, concludes the French Press Agency.

As was to be expected, at the Camp David meeting, Dan Fisk, National Security advisor for the region, declared that "in the discussion on regional issues, Cuba to come up () if there's anyone that knows how to create starvation, it's Fidel Castro. He also knows how not to do ethanol".

As I find myself obliged to respond to this gentleman, it is my duty to remind him that Cuba's infant mortality rate is lower than the United States'. All citizens -- this is beyond question -- enjoy free medical services. Everyone has access to education and no one is denied employment, in spite of nearly half a century of economic blockade and the attempts of US governments to starve and economically asphyxiate the people of Cuba.

China would never devote a single ton of cereals or leguminous plants to the production of ethanol, and it is an economically prosperous nation which is breaking growth records, where all citizens earn the income they need to purchase essential consumer items, despite the fact that 48 percent of its population, which exceeds 1.3 billion, works in agriculture. On the contrary, it has set out to reduce energy consumption considerably by shutting down thousands of factories which consume unacceptable amounts of electricity and hydrocarbons. It imports many of the food products mentioned above from far-off corners of the world, transporting these over thousands of miles.

Scores of countries do not produce hydrocarbons and are unable to produce corn and other grains or oily seeds, for they do not even have enough water to meet their most basic needs.

At a meeting on ethanol production held in Buenos Aires by the Argentine Oil Industry Chamber and Cereals Exporters Association, Loek Boonekamp, the Dutch head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s commercial and marketing division, told the press that governments are very much enthused about this process but that they should objectively consider whether ethanol ought to be given such resolute support.

According to Boonekamp, the United States is the only country where ethanol can be profitable and, without subsidies, no other country can make it viable.

According to the report, Boonekamp insists that ethanol is not manna from Heaven and that we should not blindly commit to developing this process.

Today, developed countries are pushing to have fossil fuels mixed with biofuels at around five percent and this is already affecting agricultural prices. If this figure went up to 10 percent, 30 percent of the United States' cultivated surface and 50 percent of Europe's would be required. That is the reason Boonekamp asks himself whether the process is sustainable, as an increase in the demand for crops destined to ethanol production would generate higher and less stable prices.

Protectionist measures are today at 54 cents per gallon and real subsidies reach far higher figures.

Applying the simple arithmetic we learned in high school, we could show how, by simply replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent ones, as I explained in my previous reflections, millions and millions of dollars in investment and energy could be saved, without the need to use a single acre of farming land.

In the meantime, we are receiving news from Washington, through the AP, reporting that the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees throughout the United States has edged beekeepers to the brink of a nervous breakdown and is even cause for concern in Congress, which will discuss this Thursday the critical situation facing this insect, essential to the agricultural sector. According to the report, the first disquieting signs of this enigma became evident shortly after Christmas in the state of Florida, when beekeepers discovered that their bees had vanished without a trace. Since then, the syndrome which experts have christened as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has reduced the country's swarms by 25 percent.

Daniel Weaver, president of the US Beekeepers Association, stated that more than half a million colonies, each with a population of nearly 50 thousand bees, had been lost. He added that the syndrome has struck 30 of the country's 50 states. What is curious about the phenomenon is that, in many cases, the mortal remains of the bees are not found.

According to a study conducted by Cornell University, these industrious insects pollinate crops valued at anywhere from 12 to 14 billion dollars.

Scientists are entertaining all kinds of hypotheses, including the theory that a pesticide may have caused the bees' neurological damage and altered their sense of orientation. Others lay the blame on the drought and even mobile phone waves, but, what's certain is that no one knows exactly what has unleashed this syndrome.

The worst may be yet to come: a new war aimed at securing gas and oil supplies that can take humanity to the brink of total annihilation.

Invoking intelligence sources, Russian newspapers have reported that a war on Iran has been in the works for over three years now, since the day the government of the United States resolved to occupy Iraq completely, unleashing a seemingly endless and despicable civil war.

All the while, the government of the United States devotes hundreds of billions to the development of highly sophisticated technologies, as those which employ micro-electronic systems or new nuclear weapons which can strike their targets an hour following the order to attack.

The United States brazenly turns a deaf ear to world public opinion, which is against all kinds of nuclear weapons.

Razing all of Iran's factories to the ground is a relatively easy task, from the technical point of view, for a powerful country like the United States. The difficult task may come later, if a new war were to be unleashed against another Muslim faith which deserves our utmost respect, as do all other religions of the Near, Middle or Far East, predating or postdating Christianity.

The arrest of English soldiers at Iran's territorial waters recalls the nearly identical act of provocation of the so-called "Brothers to the Rescue" who, ignoring President Clinton's orders advanced over our country's territorial waters. Cuba's absolutely legitimate and defensive action gave the United States a pretext to promulgate the well-known Helms-Burton Act, which encroaches upon the sovereignty of other nations besides Cuba. The powerful media have consigned that episode to oblivion. No few people attribute the price of oil, at nearly 70 dollars a gallon as of Monday, to fears of a possible invasion of Iran.

Where shall poor Third World countries find the basic resources needed to survive?

I am not exaggerating or using overblown language. I am confining myself to the facts.

As can be seen, the polyhedron has many dark faces.

[Bacchus39]

7. talk about rambling!!!

well, how about Cuba convert some of their tobacco fields into food crops, or their sugar fields. there is more than enough sugar to go around thus the low prices.

[Craftsman]

8. There are better uses for ethanol

I have concerns about anything that makes my liquor cabinet and gas tank compete for the same commodity.

[Mika]

9. They are.

As usual, you reveal your limited knowledge of Cuba NOW. Never mind.

What sugar prices are you talking about? US subsidized sugar prices?