Food vs Fuel

A very good article here :
www.chinadaily.com.cn...

When the market sees that it is more profitable to produce ethanol than sell the grain for food, the food industry will be in trouble. Since ethanol is used as a fuel, its price will be tied to the price of oil. As oil prices climb because of the impending world shortage of oil, ethanol prices will rise. As a consequence food prices will rise as well.

It should be noted that if the entire US corn crop were converted into ethanol, it would satisfy only 16 percent of US transport needs. The amount of corn that goes into the gas tank of a large automobile could feed one person for a year.

news.bbc.co.uk...

In its report, the IEA argued that biofuel production would hit 1.8 million barrels by 2012, more than double 2006 levels.

I want to show that ethanol is not the solution for the oil running out.Unlike oil it takes more time and energy to produce it, also it makes the food prices to rise, and as you can see from the article above 1.8 million barrels a day in 2012 is nothing, the world consumes now 80 million barrels of oil a day.

What happens in poor countries : the few that own the land begin to farm for ethanol, the food prices go up, all they care is that the profit from ethanol is bigger than the profit from growing food, nothing else matters. In this time poor people who don't own land have problems because less food is being produced and it costs more to buy.

A few more articles about this problem :
www.timesonline.co.uk...
www.technologyreview.com...
americas.irc-online.org...