Bio-Fuel Causes Egyptian Starvation
April 21st, 2008The cost of living has risen drastically around the world from increasing real-estate, gasoline, education and now food. But its not fillet mignon or sauteed lobster tail that have risen in cost, it’s the basic essentials of developing nations. Take Egypt for example and the increase in simple staples of nourishment, rice, bread, beans, onions even vegetable oil. Foods such as these have increased more than double since 2004 and some cases quadrupled in only a few months. We’ve all heard of the massive bread shortages in Egypt due to the increased cost of wheat but now what used to cost 2 EGP for vegetable oil now costs 15 EGP. Fava beans, the most basic food, afforded by the poorest of the poor costs 8 EGP per Kg, something that cost a quarter of that a year ago.
Egypt is not alone in rising food costs, its an epidemic affecting millions of people across the third world and the cause of the increase will amaze you. Though rising gas prices and the corresponding increase in transporting food is part of the problem it only accounts for 15% of the increase. Ironically the increase in the cost of beans, grains and oil’s have come from developed nations and their response to increased oil costs. Governmental policies within the U.S. and E.U. have caused an increased demand on beans and grains to be used for bio-fuel, a supplement of petroleum. The programs designed to fulfill specific quotas are operating with an inefficiency not seen since the peak of the Soviet Union. Farmers, corporations and scientists are milking the government for extremely high and wasteful subsidies, robbing taxpayers and wasting enough grain to make Stalin proud, resulting in the worldwide cost of farmed goods to sky rocket.
Do I blame the U.S. like every Osama bin Laden loving Arab will once this news reaches the mainstream? No, no, no, quite the contrary. I blame Arabs! You heard me. As always Arabs manage to shoot themselves in the foot out of their own greed and their inability to see past their own nose. Do you happen to notice something here?
Since 2004 the barrel of oil has gone from $32 to $115 because Arab oil producers want to squeeze the U.S. for every last penny being that they consume 35% of the worlds oil and as a result of the price gouging, the U.S. (seeing no end in sight) has begun to pursue other forms of fuel such as Bio-fuel causing food to dramatically rise in price starving the very nations who have profited off the oil in the first place. (Egypt hasnt made crap off of oil but we’ve been caught in the crossfire like many other poor nations). You see the world and all its misfortune are a chain reaction of events. So when the Arabs want to blame someone for this problem, please look at your neighbors.
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There has been an increasing amount of criticism directed towards bio-fuels in recent months. However, there are many promising technologies, that can produce biofuels without harming world food supplied.
In any case, biofuels, emission caps, using sheep as lawn mowers - I don’t see them as sufficient to combat climate change. Population reduction is the way to go.
There is a difference between farmers in the West and agri business. For decades now, smaller farms have been steadily disappearing in North America. The cost of machinery and transport pretty much guarantees that, unless a farmer moves into more specialized produce or gets income outside the farm, farms have to be a certain size to operate at a profit. This is especially true for grain farming. In the northwest States and Saskatchewan, the population has been shrinking as the size of farms increases. These massive agri-corporations work with their governments to fix prices and productivity, at first to survive (a country importing most of it’s foodstuffs is rather vulnerable) but now, with gas expensive enough that ethanol has become profitable, there is a spike in prices because it will take years before all the land that was allowed to go off grain production will be re-introduced.
There is farmable land throughout Canada and the US that is being minimally used because generations of farmers have become used to the concept that their skills (in driving, construction, outdoor hard work) will often make three times their hourly wage in the job market than on their family farms.
These farms will start producing again due to these prices, and in a few years you will probably see a glut in the global food market, but the hard truth is that such a thing is years away, and doesn’t account for environmental or man-made crises.
So, you are basically right, D.B. If not for the price of oil reaching a certain point, ethanol and bio-diesel would not be profitable and the grains market would still be cheap and plentiful.
I still support this industry by filling up on ethanol wherever I can, because it does support farmers in a kind of twisted way. Sorry about that.
The ‘Greenies’ want to be able to pat themselves on the back about how ‘green’ they are - to hell with the fact that the price of basic food products is going up!
[...] in Egypt, D B Shobrawy paints another picture - blaming rising gas prices and the greed of the Arab oil barons for the [...]