United Nations: This Is Your Car On Ethanol
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 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.
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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!
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!
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.
Is that car in your Avatar an early 70s NSU Ro80?