Food, not fuel

The recent food price increases that are costing Canadians more for groceries and threaten recent progress toward reducing poverty and malnutrition in the developing world are occurring for many reasons, but a central one is the environmental craze for green fuels like ethanol. Subsidizing corn production for fuel to be consumed in automobiles, but not for agricultural purposes to be consumed as food by human beings, is an insane policy that elevates protecting the Earth above the need to feed the planet’s vulnerable people.

It is questionable whether ethanol is the cure to the problem (if indeed it is a problem) of gas-guzzling, carbon dioxide-spewing cars and trucks. But even if it is a solution, it causes new problems, to which rising food prices can attest. Due to subsidies from Washington, corn farmers can get more for their crops if they are diverted to ethanol production instead of the grocery store. Furthermore, the problem of food scarcity is made worse when other farmers begin to grow corn (rather than soya beans, for example) to also take advantage of taxpayer-funded largesse.

Since 2001, U.S. production of mostly subsidized ethanol has increased from 1.7 billion to 6.5 billion gallons. Every acre of corn produces 7,110 pounds of corn, which is enough produce for just 328 gallons of ethanol fuel. Ethanol subsidies are taking hundreds of billions of pounds of corn off the food market and re-routing it into gas tanks. That drives up the price of whatever corn that is left to eat, as well as other food staples such as rice and grain.

In other words, a well-intentioned policy to address an environmental problem that may or may not exist has resulted in food prices spiralling out of control and, according to the World Food Program, threatens to push 100 million people in the developing world into poverty and malnutrition. Our sense of priorities has gone horribly wrong; bellies, not gas tanks, need to be filled with the food our bountiful Earth provides.