United Nations: This Is Your Car On Ethanol

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

A chicken could become as unreachable as caviar in many poor countries, warns a study of the OECD and the United Nations. Chicken is projected to rise in price by 30 percent in the next ten years – inflation adjusted. Other staple foods such as corn, sugar or cooking oil are seen rising in price by twenty percent. Why? On one side of the ledger is higher demand, mainly from China and India. On the other side: „Increasingly, the crop doesn’t end up in the pot, but as fuel in the tanks of cars,“ says the German magazine Der Spiegel.

This trend is fueled, so to speak, by a shortage of water and higher energy costs. “Higher prices may be good for farmers, for people who spend a large share of their income on food, this is a catastrophe,“ says OECD General Secretary Angel Gurría.

In the coming week, agricultural ministers of the G20 will have a meeting in Paris to discuss the price increases. Aid organization Oxfam doesn’t expect any results from the meeting. The organization predicts that governments will not stop their ethanol subsidies. Oxfam warns:

“Huge numbers of people, especially in the world’s poorest countries, are cutting back on the quantity or quality of the food they eat because of rising food prices. World leaders – especially leaders of the powerful G20 countries – must act now to fix our broken food system. They must regulate the commodity markets and reform flawed biofuels policies to keep food prices in check.”

What seems to have more results are buyer strikes against ethanol, such as the one in Germany.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

More by Bertel Schmitt

Comments
Join the conversation
10 of 69 comments
  • Blowfish Blowfish on Jun 18, 2011

    Blaming poor people for “cranking out kids” is among the most ignorant and shallowest of thought patterns. so do we fix it, by sending more foods to Africa so their rulers will buy more arms, fast cars from us, while the population growth is not subsiding!

    • NulloModo NulloModo on Jun 18, 2011

      Sub-Saharan Africa is a huge clusterfrak in general. CJ does have a point that many of the problems come from corrupt government - the governments over there selling out to corporations that value the cheap labor to harvest cocoa or mine for diamonds over the value of human life. While I don't think we are sending food over there so that anyone will buy guns or cars from us (are there any meaningful markets in Africa south of the Sahara and north of South Africa?) you do bring up a point in regards to the problems with food distribution. It's similar to the case with North Korea where any food aid that's sent over is grabbed by the government and military, only in the case of Africa it's the corrupt government agents and the warlords. Even with making fuel from corn over here there is more than enough agricultural capacity to feed the starving in Africa, the problem is finding ways to get that food to the people who need it on a steady basis, and eventually finding ways for them to grow it themselves in communities with a sense of security so that they won't forever be dependent on international aid.

  • Eldard Eldard on Jun 18, 2011

    Oh, keep the population growing. My area is number 1 in my country for producing corn. Remind me to invest in those. And cooking oil! We have lots of those, too. I take back what I said about tree huggers. I love them hippies!

  • 2ronnies1cup 2ronnies1cup on Jun 18, 2011

    Environmental concern certainly helped to speed the withdrawal of DDT, but the main cause was that resistance was developing at a startling rate amongst Anopheles populations. Nowadays, resistance is so common that in most parts of the world you need to make a resistance assay before considering deploying DDT.

    • See 3 previous
    • Rpn453 Rpn453 on Jun 21, 2011
      @ExPatBrit Certainly insects become resistant to chemicals (it’s how the pesticide manufactures stay in business) but that has yet to explain how a cat ends up as an elephant. Insects become resistant to chemicals because it's in the best interest of pesticide manufacturers for that to happen, and cats evolve into elephants. What a magical world you live in!
  • ExPatBrit ExPatBrit on Jun 18, 2011

    Is that car in your Avatar an early 70s NSU Ro80?

Next