The New York Times has an opinion article by Paul Krugman that paints a terrifying picture of the global food crisis in relation to energy and climate change. Krugman says that over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months.
Two of the causes of the crisis Krugman mentions are topics we have blogged about here: meat consumption and subsidies for biofuels. The former is particularly serious as the Chinese have developed a growing appetite for meat, which takes 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef. When you think there are about 60 billion farm animals in the world – a number that is estimated to double by 2,050 – the prospect is nightmarish.
In relation to biofuels, Krugman singles out the case of corn ethanol, a gallon of which uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But even ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil is now in for criticism because of the deforestation it’s causing. It’s worth adding here that deforestation in Brazil is also being accelarated by soya plantations, not aimed at feeding humans, but mostly to feed the unnaturally large cattle populations that factory farming generates.
The most alarming revelation in Krugman’s s article is that “land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.”
