Biofuel and world hunger. Are you as concerned as I am?

Question

Biofuel and world hunger. Are you as concerned as I am?

Answer 1

Yes because ethanol fuel is nothing but a joke! Most of  our politicians can care less because they have never set foot in a poor area.

Answer 2

whats to worry about? youre not immortal anyways. its called natural population control, it has to happen sooner or later.preferably starting in China, iran syria and egypt first.

Answer 3

wot tuba said.

also, dont forget that most grain goes to feed animals for meat.

Answer 4

Am I concerened about the over population in some 3rd world dump of a country ? Not it the slightest. They made their own bed and now they get to sleep in it. We have own own problems here and those are our priorities.

Answer 5

No,because corn is responsible for high Cancer rates.

It should be banned for food.Its in almost everything we eat.

Answer 6

Biofuel and ethanol is going to be the death of us all.

Answer 7

World farmers should grow crops for food for local people instead of pandering to overfed greedy westerners.Let the US grind to a halt without their machinery.They have enough land to grow their own food and biofuel if they need it.

Answer 8

There is a debate going on in south Africa,

Farmers in the corn belt have stopped growing maize because the selling price is not justifiable to that of the import cost.

Maize is a very good source of ethanol the question on the table is should farmers plant maize for ethanol or food.

The Governments stance on this is that the country should produce enough maize for food before it can be used for ethanol and the farmers say we've got 3million hectare of land we wont plant for food at your prices.

Here's point 2 on the agenda (you guys in Europe may not know of these issues) BUT

The EU are funding a project to stop Swazi farmers from growing sugar cane ( not 10 years ago funds were made available to go into sugar cane) and get them into other crops.

Fine good idea, sugar cane processing stuffs up the environment anyway,

We have been getting food aid because for the past few years untimely rain has destroyed the maize crops. There is nothing on the EU agenda to support food sustainability, just stop growing sugar cane because we have enough of our own in Europe and it's cheaper from Brazil anyway.

Now here is an opportunity for farmers to get high earnings from their cane to ethanol and still produce food fro the nation.

It just a Circus.

Answer 9

There seems to be a lot of politics and mis understanding about both bio fuels and food crops. There is absolutely no reason why these two things need to compete. If they do compete it is more to do with politics than anything else. I see a very different maybe overly optimistic future. There are several excellent bio fuel crops which produce reasonable yields on very marginal land. Cassava is one. (We call it tapioca). It grows on land that people here would not normally use for food crops. Yes Cassava is also a food crop but forms just a small part of the diet. It is seen as a emergency crop, or reserve for hard times by most people, or pig food. So South Korea has just opened up a large scale cassava to ethanol project in New Ireland. It will provide cash income to rural communities that up to now have had a hard time making ends meet. They have plenty of land left for their subsistence gardens and quite frankly it is far better that they grow cassava then oil palm with is another option for some of them. At least with cassava they are only committed for one crop at a time, oil palm is a long term proposal.

In Bougainvillea coconut oil has replaced about 40% of diesel fuel simply because it is cheaper. The coconuts would not have been used for food, but might have been sold as copra to produce oil for the industrialized nations to make soap or perfumes cosmetics etc.

Ethanol is an excellent bio fuel as it is the only one that offers a very cheap opportunity to actually extract CO2 from the atmosphere. During fermentation nearly pure CO2 is emitted, very cheap to capture and then dispose of this compared to any other situation, and it is CO2 from the atmosphere!

I see bio fuel production as an excellent way for currently poor farmers to make a living. Fuel is unlikely to be more expensive than good quality food, so where there is a ready market for food and the ability to grow it, it will take precedence, but for many farmers, selling food is simply not an option, but selling fuel is.

Answer 10

how concerned are you? if you live in u.s. your not nearly as concerned as you should be because hunger rarely touches you

Answer 11

I don't know. How concerned are you? I'm very concerned. I might be more concerned than you if you're only slightly concerned. But if you're extremely concerned I guess I am not as concerned as you are.

Answer 12

No.

Answer 13

Well, quite simply, the more people starve to death, the less they will be using fuels anyway, and the better the world will recover.  Hope you're a little soothed by that logic.

Answer 14

Yeah... I noticed that when I did a report on alternative energy last year. =/

Answer 15

If you're upset at biofuel production you are upset at the wrong people, although I do share your concern.

As the farmers point out, they are exceeding production goals for both food and biofuels so biofuels cannot be "causing lower food production". They blame the food problems on high oil prices and droughts due to Global Warming. There is no doubt that the biofuels programs in these countries are ill advised in most cases. However both the government of the USA and the EU provide financial subsides to those farmers to grow biofuels, but none if they grow food (or invest in their own agricultural programs).

Now here is what is really behind the food prices and shortages. The great financial houses that manage America's pension plans took huge losses last year in the real estate market. In an effort to recoup those losses they are speculating in the futures market in food commodites. Here's how that works. You first buy futures in a commodity, say rice. This means you agree to buy the rice at a future date at a price you lock in today. Then you find a way to make the price go up, or you create a shortage. Once you've done that you just unload the futures to someone else who will see them as a bargain. The financial houses freely admit they are doing this. It is legal, although the UN would like to see speculation in food banned.

Answer 16

YES!

Thank you!

We need to develop electric or hydrogen fuel cells or something, anything to get off fossil and biofuels!

Answer 17

There no one to blame but Gore and the arabs.

No one else at all.

Answer 18

The saddest thing 2 me is that the most effective crop in terms of methane(ol) production is hemp. And hemp would just happen 2 be the largest cash earning crop in the US of A.

The second and third most income generating crops(corn and wheat) combined do not compare!

Timothy

:o)

Answer 19

i cannot answer that truthfuly as you have not expressed your opinion.

Answer 20

yes. this is jus a sad time to be alive.. especialy in rural poor areas of hte world. ethanol is a laffable concept..