A woman prepares mud cakes on a street in the Cite-Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Many poor people around the world cannot afford the rising price of food. WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Time for debate on ethanol
Date published: 3/25/2008
DENVER--
Americans, who can mainly afford it, are paying more for food these days, but as a new U.N. report reminds us, there are poor people around the world who can't afford the rising prices.
They are going hungry, are rioting in some countries--are even resorting to eating mud cookies in Haiti--and maybe you are wondering why.
Ethanol, that's why.
No, this outrageous U.S. boondoggle--in which you convert corn into a biofuel at no decipherable advantage to the atmosphere or much of anything else except a handful of special interests--isn't the only reason for the price increases. One other cause is that oil, the energy source required to transport food long distances, has soared in price; and still another is the growing demand for protein in progressively more prosperous, developing countries such as China.
But when the U.S. government subsidizes ethanol and mandates its use, it transforms corn into something gold-like, a terrific means for farmers to make the biggest bucks they ever dreamed of, and this market intervention thereby serves as a special propellant of food costs. It drives up the price of all food products that contain corn, along with the price of dairy and meat products produced from livestock that eat corn. Many farmers, meanwhile, are neglecting to produce other, less profitable crops, limiting their supply and sending their prices up, as well.
So powerful is this force that it has helped reverse a steady food-price drop of some 75 percent over the past three decades, according to The Economist. It has also caused experts to scuttle predictions of declining hunger worldwide. Published reports tell us of two Minnesota professors who once were saying the number of people on the edge of starvation would go from 800 million to 625 million by 2025. They are now saying the number will go up to more than 1 billion by that year.
Tote up the impact of ethanol and other factors, and what you get is the recent U.N. report telling us that a 40 percent boost in food prices this past year is helping to keep stomachs nearly empty in such lands as Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia, and Mexico. The Economist observed that some developing-country farmers may actually be helped some by the price increase, but not residents of teeming urban areas. As The New York Times has reported, you're therefore seeing such reminders of food deprivation as the eating of those mud cookies; a 10,000-person protest in Jakarta, Indonesia; and three people stomped to death during a race for a lowered-price food product in a Chinese city.
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