Food for thought
posted by hedgehog in Ecofascism, Insanity, Petrolatum, Technocrisy, Travesty |Or rather, food for cars.
I found it strange a few days ago, in this transcript of a conversation between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, that the two of them agreed that ethanol was a horrible waste. Their reasoning was one I haven’t heard articulated outside of the disgruntled mumblings of luddites:
Hugo Chávez.- Do you know how many hectares of corn it takes to produce one million barrels of ethanol?Fidel Castro.- Of ethanol, I think you talked about 20 million hectares the other day, something like that (Laughter), but remind me.
Hugo Chávez.- Twenty million. No, you are the one with the exceptional mind.
Fidel Castro.- Ah, 20 million. Well, of course, the idea of using food for producing fuel is tragic, it is dramatic. Nobody is certain about what is going to happen with food prices, when soy is becoming a fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, to produce milk, to produce meat, and it is one more tragedy of the many that exist at this time.
But then there’s this:
An increase in the cost of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet since the Maya ruled 1,000 years ago, has triggered a slump in the peso.
Tortilla prices jumped 5.9 percent in January, the most in eight years, after costs climbed for corn, the main ingredient. That increase fanned inflation and a bond market rout that curbed demand for the currency. The peso has fallen 2.3 percent in the past month, making it the world’s second-worst performer against the dollar among the 70 currencies tracked by Bloomberg…
The peso may fall further in the next several months as corn prices continue to rise. Corn has soared 16 percent in the past eight weeks and 121 percent since late 2005 as demand for the grain grows from ethanol producers.
That’s not to say there’s no debate on the subject. But it’s pretty remarkable. Of all the reasons for corn prices in Mexico to finally rebound from their Nafta-depressed state, this is the most depressing. A need to feed cars.
Note: this blog beat me to the discussion.
Update: Saurabh, in comments, spots the impresarios’ math error. What’s two orders of magnitude when you’re in charge of a whole damn country? The basic point remains — consumption of corn for fuel, or speculation on corn because it’s now trendy to see it as an energy commodity rather than a boring old grocery store item, is screwing up Mexico.
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that whole conversation is really something. i’m gonna start leaving polemics on note cards by my phone in case fidel calls me. or maybe he would call twice and the first time, we’d arrange the themes, topics and order of presentation for the second call.
just to think about, i don’t have a lot of confidence in current ethanol, but it won’t take long for opponents to notice that hugo’s in a competing fuel business. it doesn’t matter terribly. where the two of them have influence, plans aren’t going to be knocked around by US-based verbal barbs.
Chavez is totally lying, though. Brazil is currently producing ~700 gallons per acre, which is ~13 barrels of oil equivalent per acre (ignoring inputs). This puts him off by a mere factor of 260. Maybe he is accounting for energy inputted, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near that inefficient.
Err, sorry, forgot he’s talking in hectares. 13 barrels per acre is 32 barrels per hectare, which puts him off by a factor of 640.
Isn’t Brazil producing ethanol from sugar cane, not corn? Corn ethanol strikes me as a bad idea for multiple reasons–and I’m terribly curious about the interplay between NAFTA and the infamous American system of corn subsidies–but non-corn ethanol for cars could still be a worthwhile pursuit.
Believe me, you don’t want to eat the corn that is used to produce ethanol — it most certainly is not used to produce tortillas for anybody, unless somebody is getting creative with the feed before they take it out to the cows. Simply put, there’s nothing that significant numbers of human beings use as food being turned into fuel here. Chavez simply wants to keep selling oil.
oh funny. i found a energy.gov site that said 335 gallons per acre, or about 20 barrels per hectare. that’s flipped from their conversation. counting inputs, you could call it a near zero energy gain if you wanted. it wouldn’t be totally honest but it wouldn’t be entirely wrong. so if you wanted to make a good rhetorical trick and turn the claimed 20:1 ratio on its head, after correcting for inputs, you know, like, snort “more like 1 in 20” — that’d allright.
Jake - It doesn’t matter whether people eat the corn in its raw state. Feed corn, as the reds say in their conversation, could be used for chickens and cattle or it could be used for cars. And the soil that grows feed corn could be used to grow corn used for people. Plus, I’m curious where you’re getting your information. Are you saying there are different varieties grown just for ethanol? It doesn’t change my main point but it’s interesting. If you’re saying that people don’t eat feed corn you’re mistaken: it’s routinely used for grits, corn meal, breakfast cereal and most of all corn syrup — hence the troubles with StarLink.
a) sugar cane produces more ethanol/acre than corn, and does so with less erg input. I’m not sure of the quantitative difference, but it’s sizable enough to make sugar cane viable for fuel purposes and to put corn on the fence of viability.
b) seed corn certainly is used to make masa harina which is then used to make corn tortillas, the staple of the Mexican diet.
=v= The last British”Beyond” Petroleum greenwash ad I saw was trying to be cutesy about cars “eating their vegetables.” Of course, it’s our vegetables they’d be eating. They’re killing us in so many ways already, now let’s add starvation to it!
Brazil’s biofuels (sugar cane and an increasing amount of soy) are depleting soil and prompting deforestation, which means plenty of carbon emissions. So it’s not all that sustainable now, and would be less so on a greater scale.