Reply #61: Evidence? On the Internet? What a quaint idea.

[GliderGuider]

But since you asked, these are the kinds of stories that are informing my opinion:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/05/22/corn.html

The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, and Canada is not immune, say industry experts.

Food prices rose 10 per cent in 2006, "driven mainly by surging prices of corn, wheat and soybean oil in the second part of the year," the International Monetary Fund said in a report.

"Looking ahead, rising demand for biofuels will likely cause the prices of corn and soybean oil to rise further," the authors wrote in the report released last month.

http://www.straight.com/article-101132/biofuels-bonanza-will-cost-money-and-lives

The global poor don't care about the price of meat, because they can't afford it even now, but if the price of grain goes up, some of them will starve. And maybe they won't have to wait until 2016, because the mania for "biofuels" is shifting huge amounts of land out of food production. One-sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil, and China are all heading in the same direction.

The attraction of biofuels for politicians is obvious: they can claim that they are doing something useful to combat emissions and global warming (though the claims are deeply suspect) without actually demanding any sacrifices from business or the voters. The amount of U.S. farmland devoted to biofuels grew by 48 percent in the past year alone, and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace lost food production. With other big biofuel producers, like China and Brazil, it's the same straight switch from food to fuel. The food and energy markets are becoming closely linked, which is very bad news for the poor.

As oil prices rise (and the rapid economic growth in Asia guarantees that they will), they pull up the price of biofuels as well, and it gets even more attractive for farmers to switch from food to fuel. Nor will politics save the day. As economist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute told the U.S. Congress last month: "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's two billion poorest people." Guess who wins.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6481029.stm

But the impact of soaring corn prices on consumers is likely to be less beneficial.

Corn is used directly by the food industry in things like corn flakes.

It is also widely used for feeding animals like pigs and chickens.

And food companies are warning that high corn prices will feed through to everyone's grocery bills.

In Mexico, there have been street demonstrations about the rising cost of tortillas, which are made from corn.

And rising food costs are unlikely to be the only impact of biofuel refineries buying into the corn market.

In places like Illinois, the price of agricultural land has started to rise.

That will eventually feed into the cost of other agricultural commodities.

Sam Martin puts it succinctly.

"I think that cheap food is history," he says.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=a49d1dc0-50c6-407d-91ff-666814b11c24&k=48316

Climate change, population growth and increasing demand for biofuels mean high food prices will keep rising in coming years, leaving the world's poorest even more vulnerable, the head of the UN World Food Program said.

Prices for agricultural commodities have spiked sharply in developed and emerging markets in recent months, leaving many in the world's poorest regions like West Africa struggling to afford basic supplies such as rice and grains.

"With food prices at their highest level in decades, many people are simply being priced out of the food market," WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said this week during a visit to Senegal and Mali.

From Senegal on Africa's westernmost tip to Ethiopia in the east, discontent over record prices for basic foodstuffs has become the focus of heated debate, even in the more stable economies on the world's poorest continent.

Violent protests against food price increases shook the normally conservative Islamic republic of Mauritania last week, with stone-throwing demonstrators trying to storm at least one government food store and setting car tires ablaze.

Unprecedented oil prices have increased transport costs, while the explosion in biofuels, subsidized by some Western countries for being less environmentally damaging than fossil fuels, also has tightened supply and contributed to the rise

http://money.uk.msn.com/investing/articles/nicklouth/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4791536

The global drive to put biofuels in our petrol tanks is pushing food prices up. As farmers across the western world grow more crops for turning into bio-ethanol and bio-diesel and less for food, supply is being squeezed.

Though touted as a way of offsetting global warming, biofuels have only had one clear effect so far, which has been send grain prices rocketing. While the British consumer has yet to notice much beyond the rising price of a loaf, the least well-off in other countries are already suffering.

Prices for wheat, maize (corn) and soya beans are already sky-high, as a combination of increasing subsidies for US farmers to grow corn for bio-ethanol combines with the effects of a disastrous drought in Australia, one of the world's biggest wheat growers.

"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," according to the US-based Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

You may not see stories like these as evidence of major global risk. I do. In fact I see it as a large enough risk to warrant using strong language on the Internet!