How a Tortilla Crisis is Causing an Energy Innovation

The ‘Great Tortilla Crisis’ of 2006 is having an unexpected effect two years later – helping to determine the fate of ethanol as an energy source. Ethanol got the blame for rising food prices as American farmers used the corn they grew for fuel instead of food, making it too expensive for Mexico’s poor. Now, biofuel producers are searching for sources of energy that don’t take food off the table, turning to grass, grain stalks left behind by the harvest, garbage dumps and dinner table scraps.

From The Huffington Post:

Carlo Bakker’s tiny biofuel operation, World Mobile Plants, avoids edibles. He says his mini-refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck, roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. He says he plans eventually to use organic household waste as well.

Bakker says one mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which he sells for the equivalent of US$3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.

“We don’t compete with the food chain,” Bakker said during a biofuels conference in Amsterdam. “We see opportunities not only to make money but to help people.”

Now, we’re seeing a shift toward second-generation biofuels – those that use waste streams. Universities and corporate research laboratories are pouring millions of dollars into finding a way to break down woody or grassy biomass into cellulosic ethanol. We’re still a few years away from commercial plants, however.

Biofuel proponents are upset that all biofuels have been lumped together in this backlash, when some forms made from things like sugar cane don’t have an effect on the food supply. In Europe, biodiesel is made largely of rapeseed grown on disused land. Only 40% of crushed rapeseed is used for biodiesel while the rest is processed into animal feed.

However, biofuel still requires plenty of water and is sometimes grown on fertile cropland which, many argue, could be put to better use for food.

A long-term solution could still come from the biofuel industry, if they can solve these problems. Many people view biofuels as a ‘band-aid’ solution, however – only useful until we can move on to something that’s truly sustainable. There are those who believe that turning to genetic modification is the answer, but that’s a whole other can of worms and one that we hope will not be opened any time soon.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Peak Oil, Peak Water… Peak Dirt?

Right now, there are proclamations of peak everything: peak oil, peak water, peak rice, peak metal, even peak guano. But would you ever have thought it possible to run out of dirt? It seems limitless, but in truth dirt is far more complicated than most people realize, and there were bound to be some consequences to the farming methods and chemicals that have been used in recent history.

From Planet Green:

Really, Peak Dirt- the world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe tells us that dirt is complicated stuff, made from sand or silt, then years of plants adding nutrition, bugs and worms adding their excrement, dying and rotting.

“The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches’ worth.”

Till it and plant a monoculture like corn on it and that soil gets depleted rapidly, so farmers add fertilizer, lots of it. The philosophy was “Well, if your soil’s degraded, just put some more fertilizer on, or till it another time and you can get the same crop yield,” says David Laird, a soil scientist.

So, what’s causing it? Lloyd Alter explains on Planet Green that ethanol, peak oil and meat are to blame. ‘Excessive demand for grain’, caused mainly by ethanol and meat production, has caused a huge increase in the use of fertilizer. Luckily, scientists are working on replenishing the soil with traditional farming methods, biochar and making soil from scratch. Check out the Planet Green article for the details.

Link [Planet Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user Crystl

Green Meme Killers: Ethanol Is Causing The Food Crisis

I’m sure you’ve heard it, just as we have, from self-righteous sounding friends and family. You know the sort: they think that global warming is a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, and that environmentalists must be stopped. “The reason food prices are so out of control is because we’re sinking so much into ethanol and biofuels.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The meme generally goes like this:

Last year, food-to-fuel policies led to ¼ of U.S. corn being turned into ethanol. That number will rise to over 30% this year. By 2012 as much as 40% of our corn and 30% of our vegetable oils could be be diverted to fuel production.

This diversion of food crops is reducing the supply of food and feed and contributing to food price inflation. Today, food prices in the US are rising at twice the rate of inflation. Globally, food prices rose 83% in the last 3 years.

Compelling evidence, right? Not quite. The reality is that while the U.S. is embracing ethanol on a growing scale, that’s not what is driving food prices through the roof. First, we have to consider that–and we don’t say this lightly, being a resident of a state the neither the midwest nor the south seems ready to claim–the weather in the farm belt has been batshit crazy lately. Why does that matter? It means that the 25% of corn that went to ethanol in 2007 isn’t the same 25% of corn that was cheaply available in, say, 2000. Last year it was the drought that almost killed Atlanta. In 2006? Another drought. 2005? A third goddamn drought. And of course, to make up for all of this in 2008, we so far have been having rains that would make Noah blush–if you think food prices are high now, wait until the next harvest–there’s 4 million acres of corn that didn’t get planted this year because the weather was too bad. The farmers have insurance and soybeans to fall back on. What do we have? Stocking up.

Which segues nicely to the second point: despite all of these shortages, food would still be cheap if it weren’t for futures trading. This is America, man! We make money off of everything, including corn crops that aren’t even in the ground yet. Shares of corn futures–bushels, just like a barrel of crude oil– are sold like stocks in a company, and the more crazy the weather acts, the more intense the demand is going to be for those shares. In 2004, futures closed at $2.4175. In 2008? $4.28. This isn’t about ethanol sucking up all the available corn–it’s about that corn being bought for, and in turn having to be sold for, way more money. Because the weather in the places that grow corn (see also: flyover country) has been biblically bad.

It’s not just corn, either–wheat is up, and so are soybeans, a reflection that this is a problem that’s striking in systemic fashion, not merely a symptom of the evil environmentalists convincing everybody that oil is bad. Not that we’re not trying to do that, too. But biofuels are innocent, and anybody that says otherwise has tunnel vision.

More Criticism for Ethanol: Now it’s Affecting Food Prices

Those who have looked to corn as the next great biofuel better be prepared for a new barrage of criticism. Missouri is currently seeing an uprising against its measures supporting ethanol production, because using corn for fuel means there’s less for food – both for people and for livestock. That means skyrocketing prices in an already damaged economy.

Reuters has it:

St. Onge said the committee is studying a measure that would roll back the mandate and is still determining whether to push any action before the end of Missouri’s legislative session next month.

The moves in Missouri come as Texas Gov. Rick Perry is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a 50 percent waiver of the mandate for grain-based ethanol production.

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp and Tyson Foods issued statements over the weekend supporting Perry’s request, saying “unprecedented increases for corn and soybean meal” would add billions of dollars of cost to the food industry this year.

The cons of ethanol are piling up with no signs of stopping. Stephen Pizzo of AlterNet said it well:

Is turning food into fuel as millions starve to death really the ethical answer to our oil addiction? If the ethanol folks have their way and Detroit starts cranking out E85 cars by the millions, how are you going to feel when you have to buy one. How will you feel filling up your car with food-juice during the day and then watching starving children on the evening news as some horse’s ass in Washington pontificates about how the world needs to do something about that? How will you feel?

Time to throw in the towel here, folks. It ain’t going to work. When it comes right down to it, it’s doubtful that ethanol will be any better for the earth than oil, and we’ll all be better off in the end if they stop funneling money into a useless cause. There are so many other options out there.

Link [Reuters] + [Alternet]
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Excuse Me, I’m Going to Need This to Run My Car, Or The Insanity of Food Based Biofuels

I think this comic pretty much sums up the stupidity of using corn and other food crops to create ethanol to run in cars.

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez