I wonder if said scientists are in the back pocket of big oil. Article here. Original report here.
Scientists call for halt in grain-based biofuel production
By Hwee Hwee Tan
Filed from Singapore
4/30/2008 4:54:31 AM GMT
INTERNATIONAL: Some scientists are calling for a moratorium on
using grain-based feedstock to produce biofuel to halt the rise in
global food prices. Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food
Policy Research Institute, told local journalists after a
teleconference that if a biofuel moratorium is issued this year, it
would lead to a price decline in corn by about 20 percent and wheat by
about 10 percent from 2009 to 2010.
In his published paper, Rising Food Prices: What Should be Done?, von
Braun blames the rising food prices on a combination of factors,
including high oil prices, growing population, change in world
population dietary habits and unfavourable climate change. A copy of
the paper can be found on the International Food Policy Research
Institute Web site, here.
Developed nations like the U.S. have shifted their cultivation
toward biofuel feedstocks, expecially maize, at the expense of food
crop farming. About 30 per cent of U.S. maize production will go into
ethanol in 2008 rather than into world food and feed markets, von Braun
said in the paper.
World nations have to make a hard choice between fighting high fuel
prices and fighting world hunger. If food security is more important
than national energy security, world leaders should halt biofuel
production in the meantime, he said.
While calling on a biofuel moratorium, von Braun also made the
distinction between "good" and "bad" biofuels. Waste-based and sugar
cane-based biofuels can be very good, he said.
He said the biofuel subsidies in the U.S. and Europe are an implicit
tax on staple foods that has served to distort world food prices. He
called on developed nations to eliminate biofuel subsidies and open
their markets to sugar cane-based biofuel exporting countries like
Brazil in the long-run.
Rattan Lal, an Ohio State University soil sciences professor,
supported von Braun's call for grain-based biofuel moratorium. "We
need to feed the stomach before we need to feed our cars," Lal said in
an interview with the Associated Press. "We have one billion people
who are food insecure. We can't afford the luxury of not taking care
of them and taking care of gasoline."
