Can anyone give me some websites or news articles explaining why ethanol is not creating food problems?

Question

And or other issues? I'm doing a school project about ethanol and wherther or not it is a good thing, and i need to present both sides of the issue, and i cant find any good articles justifying the fact that ethanol will not create food shortages or more emmisions issues. Thanks.

Answer 1

The only thing I can tell you from first hand knowledge is in the U.S. they pay farmers not to grow crops. They do this so there would be no over production and keep profits a bit higher. They claim it is for ecological reasons but we all know better!

Answer 2

The UN is already complaining that ethanol fuel production is cutting into the food supply in underdeveloped nations.

Answer 3

My opinion, ethanol can be made from non food crops grown on land that isn't used for food production. For instance, prairie grass is a very good crop for ethanol production and certainly wouldn't effect food production

Answer 4

The corn they use to make ethanol is not the type that is widely eaten here in the US, so technically they're not reducing the food supply. Directly at least. Obviously corn farmers have switched to this type of corn due to subsidies and profits which does mean that overall corn production for human consumption has been reduced. This yellow corn is used for animal feed as well, so it will increase the price of meat in the future and for food sweeteners (corn syrup).

The last link is a Scientific American article claiming that "grass makes better ethanol that corn does". Switchgrass will produce 13.1 megajoules of energy for every 1 megajoule of petroleum used. If true, this is much more energy than the efficiency claimed by the NCGA.

This was a bit of an eye-opener to me since I thought ethanol production required more petroleum than it produced in ethanol, a common misconception evidently. Good question.