With food prices increasing, should we be using biofuels?

Question

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2244017/Biofuels-to-blame-for-75-per-cent-increase-in-price-of-food.html

'Biofuels have caused a 75 per cent increase in world food prices, a new report suggests.' The government wants the amount of biofuels that are used to increase. Is this right with food prices rising?

Answer 1

biofuels use up the land we used  to grow food because it makes the farmers more money just a lot of greedy people out to make money while the less well off starve god help us from these people

Answer 2

It depends, us American's a lot of times have a surplus at harvest time.  I can't speak for other countries.  I'm excited about the new Compressed Air car that is excpected to reach the market in a couple of years however.

Answer 3

Why is it people think Bio fuel is so great. Do they not realize that.

1. Prices on all food are going up due to the fact that farmers are not growing wheat or tomatoes or even sweet corn they are now growing field corn. cause it is cheaper to buy and still gets bought at a high price for fuel.

2. Everyone says bio fuel is the way to stop our need for oil. Umm what? it still takes the same amount of oil to create this. It just puts off a cleaner by product. Not to mention oil is in everything we use these days.

Answer 4

Of course, because fuel-pricing is just as important in putting up the cost of food, and if oil-producers have no conscience, why should food-producers have any?

It has always been said, that America's secret weapon has always been food exports to the rest of the world, and now we start to see America flex her muscles, just as the oil barons have.

With China ring-fencing oil supplies, and Russia refusing to co-operate with the west, what is the alternative economically?

Answer 5

I had read one analysis of bio fuel production that stated that it takes 2 gallons of oil to produce 1 gallon of bio fuel.

I think it is probable that bio fuel is a being used by the US government as method of creating a world cereal shortage, thereby increasing the country's leverage over the rest of the world. In a world starved by high prices, the Monsanto GM food will gain acceptance where there is no alternative product, thus enabling Frankenstein technology to be forced into otherwise unwilling consumers.

Answer 6

Maybe but bio fuels taste awful.

Answer 7

Yes, but we need a balance of food and biofuel.   We need to use biofuel to figure the problems as technology advances.   We need tounderstand all the drawback of using biofuels before we switch over to new crops to produce our fuel.

As for food prices going up, it is actually a good thing for the third world nations.  Cheap food has bankrupt farms in the third world.   Buying American subsidize grains has sucked the country of their cash as well.   Now the food prices rise,  farmers in these countries has grew stronger and now have income.   We need these countries to be self sufficient, and not to be dependent on cheap foreign grains.   I will admit there will be problems in the short term when the food produciton shift, but if things stay the same, it would be better in the long run.

Answer 8

Hello,

(ANS) Bio Fuel has just become the newest gold rush across the world. But its also 100% totally unproven scientifically that fuels made from biological or organic materials save carbon dioxide.

**NOTE: Bio Fuels are no more or less polluting than conventional fossil fuels like petrol or oil etc. Its a complete myth that bio fuels will save the planet or can safely replace conventional fossil fuels they DEFINITELY CANNOT & WONT.

**Sadly, its just human nature to jump on the bio fuels bandwagon and its been seen as a quick way to make mega bucks (speculation) but the other side of the story is that crops grown to make bio fuels reduces the land area available for human food sources (vegetables, fruits, grains, etc).

**The British Government under both Tony Blair & Gordon Brown have made a huge mistake & have fallen for the myth that bio fuels are the solution to our energy problems and global warming issues.

**Crops for Bio Fuels only exacerbates the food shortages across the world and the sooner we all wake up to that fact the better IMO.

Regards Ivan.

Answer 9

No! it is the use of land for biofuels, not for food, that has caused these high prices (which anyone with half a brain will have recognised long ago - though evidently not the government). With such a large global population, we will never be able to grow enough food and biofuels. And personally,  i think food comes first....

Answer 10

yup, it's completely pointless. in order to produce the same amount of biofuel that we use in regular fuel, there would have to be crops on almost every acre of land in the world.

Answer 11

Bigger question is should we be exporting food to countries that are charging us $140 a barrel for oil? t*t for tat.  Maybe it's time to up the price on our exports as well....

Answer 12

We should not be using corn as the basis of our biofuel because it costs almost as much (or more) to make a gallon of fuel from corn than it does from oil.  The article below explains why sugar cane is the ideal plant to use.

Corn ethanol: 0-3 percent greenhouse gas emission reduction.

Sugar cane ethanol: 50-70 percent reduction.

Cellulosic ethanol: 90-plus percent

See why we often do what seems easy but is actually bad for the economy and the environment?  It's doing something, anything to show we care about the problem.

Answer 13

Probably not:

It is likely that biofuels are not even better for the environment as this article explains:

Rapeseed biofuel ‘produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk...

It is shocking that our government / the EU are pushing ahead with biofuels when it is possible they are doing a lot more harm than good.

Add this to the food price problem and it is evident that biofuels may not be the solution to global warming.

Answer 14

There is no justification for using biofuels.  It is a false technology.  We'd be better off running cars on coal.

Answer 15

It's sort of a trade off: would you rather pay more for food or fuel? I think developments in cellulosic biofuels, which run off of agricultural waste, would benefit the country more that regular biofuels, but it still probably wouldn't stop the problem. Perhaps green energy won't be the answer to economic fuel problems.

Answer 16

No, we should be using electric vehicles, solar powered vehicles or at least hybrids.

Answer 17

We should be concentrating on nuclear energy not biofuels

Answer 18

Of course don't you know according to the liberal environmentalist animals are more important than people.  We rather use our food and water to make gas than use the oil reserves we have in our country. In the name of saving the environment.

Answer 19

D'oh ! It's those which are driving the food prices up, so i suspect the answer would be NO here, lol.

Answer 20

Bio fuels are not an ecological answer to the fuel crisis. It destroys natural resources and  increases food price.

It is necessary to use alternative energy resources to produce electricity and use it instead fuel. Solar, wind and more alternative electricity resources.

Answer 21

Biofuels use as much fossil fuels to produce as the resulting biofuels.  No net gain in fuel.  The only intention is to increase govt kickbacks to wealthy farmers and those doing "research" in the energy field (i.e., the oil companies)