BioFuels and Global Warming

Surplus corn was seen across the Midwest in recent years, due to the US dependence on the grain. In 2007 it reached all time highs as farmers cashed in on the biofuel opportunities. But what was that all about anyway?

Anyone who drove through the Midwest last year couldn't help but to see that corn was growing everywhere. Acres were devoted to it far from the corn belt up near Traverse City, it was on every available acre that anyone could sow. The price was up and people were feeling good about helping global warming and the fuel, dare I say, crisis?

But what was going on here? It seems that everyone I spoke to who knew anything about corn, fuel, and the politics of biofuel, said the same thing. NO GO. And now the research is saying the same. Despite some supportive analysis, people are finding that those who knew what they were talking about, really did know. There are several interrelated issues with depending on corn for our future fuel.

For example, have you noticed the price of food lately? Have you any idea how much of our food is dependent on corn? (Read The Omnivore's Dilemma for a great analysis) More corn (27% in 2007, versus 20% in 2006) is being used to create ethanol. That means less is available, and supply and demand dictates that the price of corn will rise, as it did, and so did our food.

But there are now several references (this is the link to the Science article) to that fact that ethanol is not helping one of the main reasons we are moving in that direction - global warming is not reduced by using ethanol. Land use changes have released more carbon dioxide into the air. Unbroken soil is a great sequester of CO2. Oh yes, and since corn is a thirsty crop, it is straining already tenuous water supplies.

One of the new studies, however, found that due to the impact of plowing up new fields, corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline and that fuels made from switchgrass increase emissions by about 50 percent. Not all biofuels were net losers, though. The study authors suggested that producing biofuels from waste products still makes sense. (Grist)

The studies continue on saying that there are better ways to convert fields to biofuel, better crops, and maybe even using less water. Corn uses a lot of water, and the varieties grown today are hybrids, dependent on fossil fuel based fertilizers.

But how did we get into this crazed mode last year when everything was coming up corn? Politics, in a word. Agriculture and farmers have been suffering over the past few decades, and anything that looks like profit will be followed by those who depend on subsidies in order to break even. The agricultural lobby LOVED the idea of more corn, and high prices, and pushed it on the farmers, and they bit without analyzing the economic and environmental costs. As it turned out it ended up costing the consumers higher food prices, and the environment with more global warming. Subjectively the farmers are always looking for something, anything, to make a profit. Agriculture is a rough and tumble industry. Farmers are played by the political forces, and objectivity (what is actually good for the people) is never really broached.

When will we learn to be objective? I thought that was what science was supposed to be all about. It is time to leave politics behind and begin find the best form of energy, and to learn conservation too. There are ways to be energy rich and be efficient too. We just have to buckle down and work. We are not entitled, we are responsible.

PS I am adding this on March 29. Just saw the new Time Magazine and corn and biofuels are on the cover. The clean energy myth.

The Rising Cost of Food

Have you noticed what has been happening to the cost of food? If you haven't you should, it is going up. Way up. Along with energy and fuel costs, and related to it (how does that artichoke get from California to Michigan if not for fossil fuel?) the American consumer is finding out what it means to live in a world that depends on fossil fuel to transport its food an average of 1500 miles, and has had a steadily declining value to its currency (the value of the dollar has halved in relation to the Euro in the past 6 years). In the past 12 months the cost of food has risen 5.1% the worst inflation since the early 1990s. For example in the past years increases include:

• Milk and dried legumes are up 17%
• Cheese 15%
• Rice and pasta 13%
• Bread 12%
• eggs 25% (and 62% in the past 2 years)
• chicken up 10%
• apples up 11.7%
  

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So what's a person to do? Well, many of us have been doing this for a long time already - grow a garden (also in the Freep on 3/14/08). It has always made a lot of sense. No more cardboard tomatoes, and a bounty of fresh fruit and veggies with nutrition intact.

Now many people are going to turn ever more toward the cheapest foods-processed foods, but be wary - they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Processed foods lack nutritive value, made with the cheapest ingredients, and preserved with chemicals that shouldn't enter one's body unless they are interred (and I even question that). Processed foods have all kinds of bad fats (they are cheaper) and are filled with sodium and or sugar(to enhance boiled out flavor). They travel thousands of miles to sit on your store shelves. AND eating processed meats or red meats are an established source of cancer (reduce your meat consumption).

It is just more sustainable to eat what you grow (and have control over), reduce fossil fuel transport that is not necessary, and have a healthy nation (less obesity, less cancer, less diabetes). Don't you think?