Savage State of Torpor

[I've removed the paragraphs prior to the article. My understanding of peak [everything], Malthus, etc. will be left for another date and a much longer, more nuanced essay -ed.]

For now, another article on food shortages….

Via Naked Capitalism

While the New York Times has a good analysis today, “Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing,” on the increasingly contentious biofuel programs, I found “Our global warming rage lets global hunger grow,” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph the more informative treatment. In part, it’s because he marshals some statistics that I haven’t seen elsewhere, such as how dependent some countries are on grain imports. In this case, I also found his tendency to sensationalism useful. People are starving, More will starve if the first world and rapidly developing third world countries don’t curtail their consumption of animal and fish protein and get off the biofuel kick.

One can take the Scrooge/Malhtusian view that there are always poor people who lead lives of desperation and want and do the equivalent of turning to another channel. But this crisis is not going away; it’s becoming ever more acute. And the reason that the rich and powerful nations have taken interest isn’t simply competition for scarce food resources (although that is an issue too). The bigger danger is refusal to export by the haves, and wars and mass emigrations by the have-nots. The Evans-Pritchard piece give a more visceral sense of what’s at stake.

From the Telegraph:

We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

“The reality is that people are dying already,” said Jacques Diouf, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react,” he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted “massacres” unless the biofuel policy is halted.

We are all part of this drama whether we fill up with petrol or ethanol. The substitution effect across global markets makes the two morally identical.

Mr Diouf says world grain stocks have fallen to a quarter-century low of 5m tonnes, rations for eight to 12 weeks. America - the world’s food superpower - will divert 18pc of its grain output for ethanol this year, chiefly to break dependency on oil imports. It has a 45pc biofuel target for corn by 2015.

Argentina, Canada, and Eastern Europe are joining the race.