Leaders warn on biofuels and food

Today, on the BBCNEWS:

Speaking at the UN in New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people. And President Alan Garcia of Peru said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor.
Meanwhile UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hosting a meeting to discuss European policy encouraging biofuels.
But as food prices climb worldwide, there is a fear that development of biofuels could reduce the production of badly-needed basic foodstuffs. The global prices of wheat, rice and maize have nearly doubled in the past year, while milk and meat have more than doubled in price in some countries.
Such rises, combined with high oil prices, are causing increasing political instability in less developed countries across the world. Food riots earlier this month in Haiti, which is highly reliant on imports of food and fuel, led to the deaths of at least six people, including a UN peacekeeper. There has also been unrest in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

"Biofuels" have shown great promise in weaning the world away from the use of petrofuels. They are supposed to be less polluting, renewable, and all that acreage (primarily corn and soybeans) will go a long way toward absorbing that excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not so fast, say critics in the science community. First of all, they say, there's no proof that "biofuels" are any better than their fossil-fuel counterparts when it comes to greenhouse emissions. The other concern is what it may do the planet's ecology. The rush to plant additional acreage for biofuel production could put rainforests at risk, deplete fresh water supplies, deprive wildlife of habitat and eventually, affect the world's food supply.
It comes down to deciding whose needs are greater: the 800 million people all over the world who own and drive automobiles, or the billions of others who survive on a day and already spend half their income feeding themselves.

Our global food crisis

Watch (in Italian) RAI Report

A few days ago Marco Revelli [Professor of Science of Politics at the University of eastern Piedmont] wondered how it was possible that the alarm launched by FAO in Rome on global food crisis in the closing days of the Italian election campaign was not taken into account by politicians. Right now, in thirty countries of the southern world, beginning with Egypt and Haiti, the population is in turmoil.

But during the weekend election in Italy one early evening a RAI Report dedicated to food was broadcast: importing a kilo of asparagus from Peru which is air-freighted to get to our flat, we were told, means leaving in the air six kilos of CO2; meanwhile we pay eight euros per kilo for grated carrots contained in a [plastic] tank, while those who produce it earn a few cents. But that price does not include even paying the cost that nature pays with the pollution of air, land and water.

Reports also gave some alternatives: Solidarity Purchasing Groups [and from that day hundreds of people have begun to question the promoters SPG], the "kilometer zero" food and restaurants, organic farming. Perhaps the model of industrialization of agriculture [and therefore the use of pesticides, the import of products not in season on the other side of the world, the removal of land to be allocated to agrofuels] all to the advantage of the multinationals' agrobusiness has arrived at the endpoint. Certainly, this food crisis and the interest of thousands of people wanting to consume good, healthy and equitable food, say that we can’t carry on like this.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)

Popeye, a man of peace

We are all responsible for what is happening in the world through our choices and our consumption. Inspired by an article in La Repubblica I want to introduce a topic relevant to the Easter holiday: the consumption of meat.

The consumption of meat - especially red meat - is a luxury in terms of resources used for nutrition: one hectare cultivated in grain produces five times more protein per hectare than the production of meat, a hectare cultivated with spinach produces 26 times more protein.
In the world there are 1.3 million cattle, an immense herd which occupies, directly or indirectly, 24% of the Earth's surface and consumes an amount of grain sufficient to feed hundreds of millions of people.
It has been estimated that 1000 grams of vegetable protein is necessary to produce 60 grams of animal protein. That a kilo of beef "drinks" 3,200 litres of water. That it takes 22 grams of oil to produce 1 kilo of flour against 193 to produce 1 kilo of meat.

Cattle are a nutrition source which need tons of water and energy. The result of it is food for only 20% of the global population of the planet. That 20% uses 80% of the world's resources.
If all this were not enough to reduce the consumption of red meat, one must think that a part of the cereal crops needed to feed cattle are cheap-imports from countries where hunger is killing human beings. Children of poor countries do not have enough cereals to let us eat our steak.
Popeye was eating spinach. If we imitate him the world would be better.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)