Food Riots in 20 Countries reported over BioFuels by YourEnchantedGardener Blog entry

Blog: Plant Your Dream!
by YourEnchantedGardener

Food Riots in 20 Countries reported over BioFuels

People in 20 Countries had Food Riots
over BioFuels. They would prefer to
have food grown from the material
made to fill up our SUV's.

Date: 6/16/2008 8:28:57 AM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 1373 times

6:26 AM
June 16, 08

http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about356953.html

Dramatic food price inflation created by biofuel production is causing
political instability around the globe, because food products are sold
in a worldwide marketplace just like oil. There have already been
mass protests and/or food riots in Mexico, Haiti, Bolivia, Morocco,
Egypt, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Namibia,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Indonesia, India,
Pakistan, the Philippines, and Italy. In the UK, anger over biofuels
has led to numerous street demonstrations by environmental groups.
Will a starving Pakistan and India, armed with nuclear weapons, make
the world a safer place? The great call of ordinary people around the
world is for food supply security, not biofuels.

See biofuel food crisis news from around the world -

http://home.att.net/~meditation/biofuel-news.html

See all the biofuel facts at -
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

Christopher Calder

http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

On December 19th, 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the "Energy Independence and Security Act" (summary pdf 107kb), which mandates that 36 billion gallons of biofuels be produced in the United States every year by 2022, a nearly fivefold increase over current production levels. Ethanol (vodka minus H2O) and "biodiesel" (a.k.a. cooking oil) are made from food or inedible crops which displace normal agricultural activity. Biofuel crops include corn, soybeans, rapeseed (canola oil), sugarcane, palm trees (palm oil), and cassava, as well as experimental "second generation" crops such as switchgrass, jatropha, giant reed, hemp, and algae.

In 2007, 54% of the world's corn was grown in the United States, and an ever increasing percentage of that crop ended up in gas tanks instead of stomachs. The corn required to fill the 18.5 gallon gas tank of a Toyota Camry with ethanol could feed a human being for 270 days. Ethanol production took only about 6 to 7% of American corn in 1998, but has grown as a cancer on our food supply, taking somewhere between 30 to 38% by 2008. Readers should be warned that it is very difficult to get honest figures on how much U.S. corn is currently being turned into biofuel because Secretary of Agriculture Edward Schafer has effectively turned the USDA into a propaganda machine from the powerful biofuel lobby.

The U.S. is also diverting increasing amounts of soybean and rapeseed oil to biodiesel production, and world supplies of cooking oil are getting tight. These basic food crops (corn, soybeans, rapeseed) are the foundation of America's food supply, because they feed our farm animals that give us dairy products, eggs, and meat. When the cost of animal feed is pushed up by biofuel production, the price American families pay for these food items also rise. [see corn price chart] Biofuels require massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizers to produce, and the price of fertilizer rose by more than 200% in 2007 alone. Nitrogen fertilizers are largely made from natural gas, which experienced little overall price gain in 2007, so the main driving force of fertilizer price hyperinflation is undeniably biofuel production. Biofuels are pushing up the cost of all foods that require fertilizers, including rice, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, and broccoli.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, global food prices rose an incredible 40% in 2007, which qualifies as hyperinflation. The World Bank states that the cost of staple foods rose by 83% during the 3 year period from 2005 to 2008. The United Nations warns that 82 countries face food emergencies because cereal stocks are at an all-time low. Unfortunately, few consumers/voters understand exactly why food prices have risen so dramatically, and even our most respected politicians do not comprehend the magnitude of the global food crisis which they themselves helped create.

WARNING - From Barack Obama's campaign website - "Obama will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030." From Barack Obama's own mouth - "I've fought successfully in the Senate to increase our investment in renewable fuels."

[NEWS! - I hereby endorse Kay Bailey Hutchison as U.S. energy czar!]

The United Nations states that its charity programs can no longer afford to feed the starving peoples of the world because of the high cost of staple foods created by biofuel production. Mr. Jean Ziegler, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, repeatedly denounced biofuels as "a crime against humanity," and warned that “This is an imminent massacre.” Ziegler explained that families in the United States and the European Union spend only about 10 to 20% of their budgets on food, but those in poor countries are forced to spend 60 to 90%, so “It’s a question of survival.” The new U.N. food envoy, Mr. Olivier De Schutter, has also called for U.S. and E.U. biofuel targets to be abandoned, and said the world food crisis is "a silent tsunami affecting 100 million people."

Food banks in the U.S. are running low on supplies, and many families who use to contribute food are now in need of help themselves. When farmers plant more corn in order to cash in on high prices created by biofuel mandates, they reduce production of other crops such as wheat. The U.S.D.A. stated that in May, 2008, U.S. wheat supplies were lower than at any time since 1948, in part because 16% of U.S. farmland formerly planted in wheat and soybeans was planted in corn for ethanol.

The increased cost of oil has pushed the price of all products higher, but biofuel production has amplified an expected food price rise by shrinking food supplies, thus turning a manageable cost problem into a global humanitarian disaster. Oil price increases have not shrunk the human food supply, but biofuel production has! The more biofuels we produce, the less food we have to eat because we grow biofuel crops using the same land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment, and labor we use to grow food. As massive new biofuel mandates have only recently been signed into law, the world should be warned that the biofuel food price spiral has only just begun. [see Parallels - Biofuels and Mao's "Great Leap Forward"]