western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world

[Robbien]

Source: The Guardian

It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. . .

Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels "might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further". This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis". . .

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%. Biofuels aren't entirely to blame - by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand - but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2205761,00.html

[Deep13]

1. There are wa-a-a-y too many of us.

That's not a comment on the wisdom of exporting biofuels, just a general observation. I do know that increasing food production will invariably result in the increase of population. Populations (of any animal) will always expand to consume all available resources. The expansion is reactionary and has no care for the future suffering it causes when resources run out.

[saigon68]

2. "Fuck them they are Lazy" shouted the Chimpanzee