Corn Maze
I admit that since I moved out of the province, I've been a bit lazy in following all the New Brunswick newspapers, but I still keep Dan Benoit's "Streetwise" column on my RSS reader and, often, Dan posts his column before it hits the Miramichi Leader section of CanadaEast anyway.
Now, as the two of us grow older at roughly the same pace, it's nice to see he shares such bitterness over the decline of society as I do, as shown in his recent column "Whatever Happened to Quality?" But one of the torpedoes he fires across the bow of the modernity, is this:
"The powers-that-be around the globe are pushing for biofuel every chance they get.There's nothing new to touting Ethanol as a miracle product, just how it's packaged. In the twenties, Ethanol was viewed as a positive additive that would help moderate gasoline burning and create a smoother ride. I suppose, when considering cars in the twenties, a smoother ride was probably as important then as gas consumption and fossil-fuel conservation are becoming today.
"But these politicians don’t seem to care that the millions of tons of corn used every year to make this biofuel could feed millions of people in the world’s poorest countries.
"Nor do they seem to care that it takes more energy to make biofuel than you actually get out of it.
"All they seem to care about is making people believe they’re doing great things, and since most of the world seems to think (wrongly) that biofuel will save the world, they’re pushing biofuel, come Hell or high water, two things I think we’re gonna see before we’re all said and done."
What killed ethanol, then, was public opinion as prohibitionists entered the scene and went after anything alcohol-based with an aim to drive it out. Something in the back of my mind makes me think that such lunacy is behind this tar and branding of ethanol today.This ethanol that was supposed to be so good for your engine is now being questioned by consumers. There are the arguments that it reduces engine performance. There's even a lawsuit underway in California by a boater who learned that while 5.7% Ethanol may not harm his engine, it's killer on a fibreglass gas tank.
But the biggest scare is over food prices and availability, as Dan states. It's being argued that the move toward Ethanol-added gasoline is causing farmers to switch from selling their corn for food to selling it for biofuel production, despite the claim that biofuel ends up providing less energy than it takes to produce.
It's ironic, because the main reason we had so much corn to begin with was because of government policies to lower food prices. While corn-based biofuel is much more expensive to produce than gas, it's a lot cheaper to make high fructose corn syrup than it is to import white sugar. This is especially true when that white sugar comes from all those Caribbean and South American countries that the United States loves to place high tariffs on.
I remember hearing about this on the CBC a few years ago, and the source may have been a story in the New York Times by Michael Pollan, entitled, "The Way We Live Now: 10-12-03; The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions Of Obesity" in which he cites some statistics that show not only has sugar been replaced, but corn production has ramped up so much that new destinations for corn had to be found. This resulted in corn syrup showing up in more and more food since the 1970s and the result was an increase of more than 10% in our average calorie intake.
It's all politics. Corn is the most heavily subsidized crop in the United States, with over $51 billion in subsidies going to them since 1995. That means we're already up to our ears in ears of corn. On top of that, the domestic sugar subsidy in the U.S. keeps the price of regular sugar high, while cheaper foreign sugar, as I mentioned, is held in check by high tariffs.
According to the CATO institute, this has led some manufacturers to open up in Canada where they get cheaper sugar prices, so it's not all bad for us, here in the Great White Sugar North.
The pessimist in me has to suspect this flap over Ethanol production raising food prices is just some tentacle of the Bush government's War on the Environment. But maybe, there could be a nefarious silver lining. In the NYT piece, the author points out that "we have been here before."
"It turns out that we have been here before, sort of, though the last great American binge involved not food, but alcohol. It came during the first decades of the 19th century, when Americans suddenly began drinking more than they ever had before or have since, going on a collective bender that confronted the young republic with its first major public-health crisis -- the obesity epidemic of its day."What if this is a plan to increase the price of food so that corn producers could remain as well off with fewer markets, say with the disappearance of so much business making high-fructose corn syrup? That's essentially what sugar subsidies do in that industry. Maybe it's because I am from the Atlantic coast of Canada, where we don't sell ethanol-laced gas, that I can't comprehend how ethanol gas can be impacting the economy so hugely. I'm not about to do the math or research, but I'd love to see a comparison between how much corn goes into the ethanol for and average family's weekly gas usage, compared with how much they swallow as high fructose corn syrup in pop and other foods.
Then again, it could all be smoke and mirrors. Maybe corn has nothing to do with. In Canada, we've not seen nearly the increase in food prices that the United States has. They say it's because our high dollar is protecting us, or because there's a grocery chain war ongoing, that's keeping prices low. However, I've asked around and my in laws in South Korea aren't reporting a huge increase in prices either.
Gas prices are causing this inflation in food prices and other costs, and it's not because of expensive ethanol additives. It's because of an ongoing war in Iraq that's set to spread as Israel gets ready to give itself a sixtieth birthday present by smashing Iran. It's because the economic polices of the U.S. have led to a terrible trade imbalance while a freefalling U.S. dollar makes their needed oil imports more unaffordable each day.
Notice that the recent scare over rice rationing didn't spread to Canada. Only U.S. stores made the decision to ration their rice. Of course, limiting your customers to 80 pounds a day isn't really rationing (unless the obesity epidemic is far, far worse south of the border than we've been led to suspect.) Still, it makes a good story and lends credence to the increase in prices elsewhere.
Suggesting that there is a shortage of rice worldwide is also a good first step in ratcheting up of public paranoia and fear over Chinese-related instabilities and concerns. We can't really justify going to war with them because we want their non-existent oil (No blood for coal?), but maybe if food is short then they'll attack us for our rice? Oooh. Shiver.
Looking back at the supermarket shelf, food prices are going up in the States because the economy is tanking, not because crops are being diverted. That's the reality. We will feel it in Canada as our food gets diverted, not to ethanol production, but to terrified stockpilers over-purchasing in the U.S. Nevertheless, expect Harper to toe the line. Spinning the news to make it look like biofuel is the culprit is just one more kick at the environmentalist lobby before the whole chicken coop comes crashing down - and he and Bush, as far as the environment go, are in the same hen house together.
Labels: agriculture, economy, environment, history, International, natural resources
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