Another Nail in the Coffin of Biofuels?

With the global economic crisis dominating the headlines, the global food crisis — which, arguably, has a greater impact on a larger percentage of the world’s population — has faded into the background.  But a report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization put it back in The New York Times, if not on the front page.

The authors of the report blame the production of biofuels for the high cost of food around the world.  Farmers can get a better price for their corn and sugarcane crops when they’re converted into fuel, in part because of subsidies set by national governments, including our own.

In August, Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, said: “Corn domesticated our land, our diet, and our gas tanks.”  Ethanol, he added, is “the spark that lit the fire of the current food crisis.”

The U.N. report urges that nations stop subsidizing biofuels and begin phasing out existing mandates.

I’ve heard several people say that because the climate crisis is so grave and we’ve taken so little action, we have room for just one major error.  And we’ve already made it, with our investment in ethanol and other biofuels. The New York Times reports:

A host of studies in the past year concluded that the rush to biofuels had some disastrous, if unintended, consequences for food security and the environment. Less food is available to eat in poor countries, global grain prices have skyrocketed and precious forests have been lost as farmers have created fields to join the biofuel boom, the studies said. Worse still, specialists say, so much energy is required to convert many plants into fuel that the process does not result in a savings of carbon emissions.

Ethanol is the worst of the biofuels, in part because of the amount of energy it takes to make ethanol from corn, and because our agricultural system is run on petroleum.  On a factory farm, it takes a half a gallon of oil to produce every bushel of corn.

I agreed with McCain exactly once during the debate last night.  “I’d eliminate ethanol subsidies. I oppose ethanol subsidies,” he said.  Obama has continued to support them, and included biodiesels, another word for biofuel, in a list of alternative energy sources his administration would invest in.

But it seems that, with a global recession looking more and more likely, access to affordable food will be increasingly important. As Pollan said, “Even though the candidates are not talking about it, they will have to.”

Photo sources, clockwise from top left: Show Me the Honey, ABC News, Wendy Usually Wanders, Triple Pundit.