ashley snyder/april 18 2008/4:43pm/food scarcity
Since the beginning of the semester I've been checking for news about food shortages and I've mostly come up with shortages due to too much rain, lack of rain, inadequate farming, stalls in beuracracy, and government corruption/conflict. As all these factors continue to hinder the countries I've been focusing on: Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Venezeula; there is a new player in the world food crisis situation. I'm sure you've all heard about food prices soaring due to increases in gas prices, well they are soaring due to crops (corn,etc.) being used for biofuels.
As scientists look to biofuels to battle the world energy crisis, in which they hope that 5% of oil used by 2010 is biofuels, they are adding to the world food crisis. Biofuels do come with a price and that price right now is the use of crops and agricultural lands for biofueld production, which takes away from the world food supply. Some examples of the effects of this are:
40 Billon tons of maize was cultivated last year, 30 billion tons of that was to produce ethanol, in turn doubling maize prices. aside from crops being used for fuel instead of consumption, prices doubling, people are also worried about farmland being used to cultivate these crops.
I leave you with a quote: "As a World Bank report puts it, the maize needed to produce enough ethanol to fill up an SUV tank, can feed a man for a year."
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080047053
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