CONGRESSMAN [Roilo] Golez’s concern that biofuels will eat into food security — specifically, “making beer more expensive” — strains credulity.
Couldn’t he at least think of other, more plausible reasons besides worrying about a more expensive alcoholic drink?
– Perla Limbaga Manapol, Banga, Aklan, Philippines (via e-mail)
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January 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Mr. Golez,
The problem in the Philippines is not lack of land for food production; there are lots of unused lands for that. The problem is the proper storage, proper refrigeration, proper distribution and procession of these food items. Moreover, it is also better price for farm products that are being grown and sold at farms.
Go around the provinces and you will see a lot of untended land simply because it is more expensive to produce the food compared to the price it is being bought at farmgate prices (prices bought at the farms themselves) while these end up being sold at horribly high prices at the city market.
Once more, we cannot compare ourselves to other nations in terms of food security or insecurity for that matter. We are capable of producing food far more than what we are currently producing; much more than what our population need really. However there is simply little incentive for farmers to grow more because it is being bought from them for dirt cheap.
The only possible danger we can see in biofuel production is this. When we start leasing out our land to foreign “investors” and they in turn convert massive tracts of agricultural land for mono-cropping. This however can be remedied by disallowing leasing out large tracts of Philippine land to foreign investors. One example was the attempt of government (was it an initial phase?) to lease to a China firm between one million to two million hectares of Philippine agricultural land. This however is the fault of government policy makers, which can be solved by changing policies in leasing out our nation’s lands.
But in the larger sense, biofuels would help the ordinary farmers to produce crops or plants which provide high value returns. As for food production, government should built proper food transport and storage facilities in order to encourage our farmers to plant more food crops in the small chance of “food insecurity”. There is just too much unused land; we simply have to use them.
Biofuels are simply a transition solution to the fuel problem. Eventually we have to develop other alternative ways like through the development of electric vehicles and even hydrogen fueled vehicles. Moves are being made towards this direction:
http://blogs.inquirer.net/roadtrip/2008/01/01/pinoy-made-electric-cars-top-draw-but-stuck-at-qc-circle/
The electric jeeps of Makati are also a prime example for a shift towards this trend.
While the acceptance of the electric cars is slow at this moment, we should continue our course through the transition fuel which is biofuel.
January 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Happy New Year to all, I guess for the most part here, many would agree that an alternative energy source other than traditional petroleum products.
As a compromise and an approach to a “petroleumless” future especially with regards to vehicles, an efficient policy scenario could be this:
First: Development of biofuel (whether biogasoline or biodiesel) and use of this; as no major conversions are needed in current internal combustion vehicles in order to use these.
Second: Development of electric or alternative fuels like hydrogen which will slowly supplant conventional internal combustion engines.
Third: Research and development of even more efficient and pollution free alternative energies now and in the future
By toeing this general policies, we could then carefully wean away from dirty fuels from other nations and greatly reduce our dependence of these foreign products not to mention reduce pollution in the country.
In order to know how inefficient current petroleum run vehicles are, just count the number of vehicles running idle through the traffic in the cities, and calculate how much fuel are wasted because of this and calculate the pollution created by current vehicles while running idle. Add this to the normal inefficiencies that current vehicles are doing. The results could surprise you.
I am not even counting the billions of pesos lost due to health problems caused by pollution in cities caused by ground extracted petroleum.
It is high time to change our tack towards traditional fuel products. While the US, China, India and other nations drag their feet regarding these issues, it does not mean that we should emulate them and drag our feet as well. They have their own interests, our country have our own interests as well. We should trailblaze a new path and start a new direction with regards to fuel for the present and fuel for the future.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:45 am
26 December 2007 - 9:04AM View all news | Send to a friend | Print
UN issues warning of critical food shortages ‘The livelihoods of billions of people will be se
Rosslyn Beeby
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Almost 40 countries are facing critical food shortages as world food prices soar to record levels, the United Nations warns.
The world’s food supplies are rapidly dwindling due to crop failures caused by global warming, natural disasters, wars, and a trend away from farming food crops to growing biofuels and grain to feed cattle, the agency says.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s global food price index reached its highest level this year, rising by more than 40 per cent, compared with 9 per cent last year.
“There is a very serious risk that there will be less people able to get access to food because of prices,” FAO head Jacques Diouf said.
The cost of imported food for the world’s poorest countries has risen by 25 per cent this year to about $US107 billion the highest on record. Countries facing critical food shortages include 20 African countries as well as Iraq, Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan.
Food riots caused by shortages and rising prices have also occurred in Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Senegal.
In its monthly analysis of global food prices, the FAO said there had been an unprecedented “hike in world prices of, not just a selected few, but of nearly all, major food and feed commodities”.
Rarely had the world felt such “a widespread and commonly shared concern about food price inflation,” the FAO analysis said. In Australia, food prices have increased by 12percent over the past two years, chiefly because of drought and crop shortages linked to global climate change.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows prices for bread and eggs have increased by 17 per cent since 2005, vegetables by 33 per cent, honey by 100 per cent, dairy products by 11percent and fruit by 43 per cent.
A recent report by economist John Quiggin for the Australian Conservation Foundation concluded “price shocks similar to those being experienced by Australian consumers during the currently severe drought may start to occur every two to four years, rather than once a decade, unless strong action is taken to reduce global emissions”.
Quiggin said some practices proposed as strategies to mitigate the impact of climate change such as growing corn and sugar cane for biofuels and the use of forestry plantations as carbon sinks would inevitably contribute to “upward pressure on food prices”.
The impact of biofuels on world food production will be reviewed at a UN conference on food security next year.
It was essential biofuel policies were “coordinated at an international level taking into consideration the objective of fighting hunger,” Diouf said.
Higher meat consumption in emerging market nations across Asia are also driving food price increases.
In 1985, China’s average consumption of meat was of 20kg, but per capita meat consumption had now increased to 50kg, Diouf said. This reduced the amount of grain available because 1kg of beef could take as much as 8kg of grain to produce.
The British medical journal The Lancet recently published a study suggesting a 10 per cent cut in global meat consumption by 2050 would reduce greenhouse emissions from agriculture and also improve health for rich and poor nations.
Agricultural experts have also warned global warming will result in shorter growing seasons and smaller crop yields across most of the developing world, affecting the lives of billions of people. A report by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research estimates wheat production in India could drop by 50 per cent within 40 years, putting as many as 200 million people at risk of worsening food shortages.
Growing seasons in many parts of Africa will decrease by 20 per cent, with some of the world’s poorest farming communities in east and central Africa including Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Eritrea among the worst affected.
“The livelihoods of billions of people in developing countries, particularly those in the tropics, will be severely challenged as crop yields decline due to shorter growing seasons,” International Rice Research Institute director Dr Robert Zeigler said.
The FAO said soaring petroleum prices had contributed to price increases for agricultural crops by raising farm production costs and boosting demand for biofuels.
“The combination of high petroleum prices and the desire to address environmental issues is currently at the forefront of the rapid expansion of the biofuel sector: this is likely to boost demand for feedstocks, most notably, sugar, maize, rapeseed, soybean, palm oil and other oil crops as well as wheat for many more years to come.”
According to the FAO, the amount of corn used for biofuel production in the US will double to 110 million tonnes by 2016. In Europe, the amount of wheat devoted to biofuel will rise twelvefold to 18 million tonnes by the same date.
Earlier this year, Jean Ziegler, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, denounced biofuels as “a crime against humanity” and called for a five-year moratorium on their production.
December 29th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
To Rod:
I say AMEN.
It is really sad that we are in state of accepting all the Western traditions, loved almost anything foreign, and yet we threw out the Americans from their bases in our country.
From Pres. M.L. Quezon to the present politicians,…..all will jump at every opportunity to reject any suggestion of any U.S. incursion on our land, and yet when they want to go on vacation or hide from the authorities, their first destination is the U.S. mainland. I wonder why?
I really wonder if we will ever get rid of our colonial mentality. Hopefully the future generation will. I am of the old generation, and I have been conditioned to that colonial mentality myself. SAD indeed !!!!
December 28th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
It’s not because we learned to celebrate Christmas from the Spanish but rather as Christians it is a tradition that Christians practice every where. If Islam had become the dominant religion we would be celebrating the Eid al-Fitr and attending the Hajj instead.