Germans cry over gummy bears and beer

You would have thought it is a joke, but sadly it isn’t. I came across an article in the German press over the weekend that at first struck me as some kind of April Fool’s day prank, but since we’re in August it couldn’t be that. Apparently, Germany’s beloved gummy bears are ‘the latest victims’ of prices pushed up by the massive shift of crops to biofuel, reported the online version of the German publication Spiegel. Prices of glucose, the second main ingredient in the chewy candies after sugar, rose by 30 percent in 2006 and the company behind it, Haribo, is not happy about it. German brewers are also not happy with the rise in the price of barley used to make beer.

Gummy bears, beer. Hmmm. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that they don’t really count as food and it doesn’t really matter if the prices for such superfluous products go up because farmers are getting better subsidies to produce the prime matter for biofuel. Really. And of course, this is what the industry says… they would, wouldn’t they?

Come on Germany, you’re the country of the Green Party. Don’t disappoint the rest of the world with pettiness and your unwavering predilection for big cars.

But if we look at this press release from the World Watch Organisation, then the pictures is slightly different. It says: “The increase in world agriculture prices caused by the global boom in biofuels could benefit many of the world’s rural poor—one of many conclusions of a landmark new 450-page book, Biofuels for Transport: Global Potential and Implications for Energy and Agriculture, authored by Worldwatch and published by Earthscan.

“Decades of declining agricultural prices have been reversed thanks to the growing use of biofuels,” says Christopher Flavin, president of the Institute. “Farmers in some of the poorest nations have been decimated by U.S. and European subsidies to crops such as corn, cotton, and sugar. Today’s higher prices may allow them to sell their crops at a decent price, but major agriculture reforms and infrastructure development will be needed to ensure that the increased benefits go to the world’s 800 million undernourished people, most of whom live in rural areas.”

So there you go. People in the developed world have to get used to the idea that the energy crisis and global warming mean the end of unfeasibly low prices and material excess we have grown used to. We may find that life is better without too much clutter, actually. However, having said all this, it is crucial that alongside the use of alternative energy, governments find ways to ration the use of cars, otherwise it seems likely that we may be faced with food shortages if biofuel demands grow out of control.

While still on the subject of energy, a leak of enrichened uranium in Tennessee, kept veiled from the public by the government, is further evidence of how dangerous this type of energy can be.

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