Rhinocrisy

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.

Just a heads-up. I assume by now that all of you have heard of and perused Conservapedia, the product of a group of uneducated troglodytes home-schooled conservative students which attempts to counter the pervasive liberal bias evident in Wikipedia (cf. Colbert’s observation that this bias may be attributed directly to reality). It’s only good for a chortle at the moment, since they seem to have locked out account creation and anonymous page edits. But you might check out their page of Debate topics, or the star in their crown, the Theory of Evolution (link fixed).