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The food-fuel paradox

The buzzword is ethanol. As the alternative green fuel of the day, craze for ethanol is running high. E-85, the mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, that has a capacity to reduce emission of GHG by 12% to 19%, is rapidly becoming popular in USA, Brazil, China and many other countries with populations sensitive to climate change. In European countries, edible vegetable oil is used for bio-diesel. Refined oil from rapeseed and canola is used for direct injection into truck fuel. China is using rice and wheat, besides corn, to produce ethanol.

Golam KiBRIA
HOW much fuel can we burn before the apocalypse strikes? The catastrophe that the whole world is screaming about? How much can we move forward before the silent approach of a cataclysmic change of climate that is probably accelerating every moment?
The answer is bizarre.
The rate of our milking the oil resource stands at 74 million barrels a day. This peak was reached in May 2005. Not much change has been initiated in the face of the rising oil demands since then. The daily consumption today stands at 88 million barrels and this is managed by cutting the inventory, increasing refinery efficiency, etc. * Higher demand may not be able to induce an increase in supply or, in other words, accelerate the milking process of the planet
A recent U.S. Department of Energy conference in Washington maintains that future crude production will be constrained by physical, economic and political factors that add up to tight markets and higher oil prices. The chief economist of the International Energy Agency says that the world oil prices are likely to remain high 'for many years to come’ as demand increases, and national oil companies lack an incentive to increase production.
The price of a barrel of crude oil exceeded $ 117 a few days back.
The situation was more grimly painted by James Schlesinger, who was the United States' first energy secretary during the oil shock of the late 1970s. He said: 'At some point during the decade immediately ahead, we will hit a plateau,
and this will have a tremendous shock both economically and politically."
This crisis in fuel is unfolding at a time when the world has entered into the compliance window of the famous Kyoto Protocol's binding targets of emission reductions, for cutting the GHG to the limits set out for the annex 1 countries. Window of compliance spans for five years, from 2008 to 2012, and the developed countries will have to cut down the emission of GHG below the baseline in the year 1990. The reduction may be either by’joint implementation, emission trading or through the famous clean development mechanism.
Yvo De Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nation's Framework Convention for Climate Change did shed a lot of light on the emergence of carbon trade, in his speech in the recently held showcase event of UNFCCC, the Carbon Market Insight 2008, at Copenhagen, Denmark.
Amongst many of the stunning truths that he delivered in his speech, I wish to mention a few here:
• An exorbitant $20 trillion is needed for meeting the emerging energy need up to 2030. If this is channeled into conventional technology, a rise of 50% GHG emission will occur by 2050.
• IPCC targets stabilising Green House Gas emission in the next 10 15 years and then dramatically cut back the emission by 50% by the year 2050.
• There is a major disconnect between facts in para 1 and the projection in para 2. The only reconciliation can be to have a new financial architecture that will spawn green energy in accel- erated pace.
• Carbon market is one such financial model, now worth Euro 40 billion and soon to hit Euro 63 billion.
If we look at the information above, a distinct emerging equation will be in sight. Fossil fuel, and its conventional use as source of energy, is no more sustainable. The abundance or shortage of the black liquid, that has a huge calorific value ingrained in it, and which can turn the world into a global war field, is losing out in setting the equilibrium of global politico-economic forces, to more benign technology and sources of energy. It is more so at a time when the scientists are revealing that the largest ice shelf in the northern hemisphere has fractured into three main pieces. And the whole world is losing a chunk of arable land of the size of Ukraine every year to the calamities induced by climate change.
However, the sky-rocketing price of fuel may affect the food management of the world, with huge negative impact.
In the Philippines, dramatic food security measures are underway. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has asked people not to throw away leftover rice and urged fastfood restaurants, which normally give customers a cup of rice with meals, to offer a half-cup option to cut waste.
The price of rice has increased by about 20% in the past 3 months alone. It has doubled since 2004. This rising trend of the price of rice will go un-abated for years to come.
In Bangladesh, we are seeing rise-crisis firsthand, everyday. The long queues on the roadside subsi- dised rice sale centers are probably an indication of the coming hunger, when 30 million people will face starvation. The bumper production of Boro may be a temporary relief, but heavy dependence on import for both fuel and food will definitely put us at severe disadvantage in coming days.
Internationally, this food shortage, specially of rice, has been attributed to increased price of fuel, fertiliser, change in food habits and, of course, the ill effects of climate change, manifested through climatic disasters, etc. However, the most interesting of all is the causal relationship of food shortage with the use of crops for extraction of fuel.
The buzzword is ethanol. As the alternative green fuel of the day, craze for ethanol is running high. E-85, the mixture of 85% ethanol and 15%gasoline, that has a capacity to reduce emission of GHG by 12% to 19%, is rapidly becoming popular in USA, Brazil, China and many other countries with populations sensitive to climate change. In European countries, edible vegetable oil is used for bio-diesel. Refined oil from rapeseed and canola is used for direct injection into truck fuel. Qhina is using rice and wheat, besides coni, to produce ethanol.
54% of the world's corn supply is grown in America's mid-west, providing it an edge that is becoming more prominent in a world faced with an impending food crisis. However, U.S. corn exports are in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidise ethanol production.
This again creates a strain on already receding abundance of food. The amount of food required to produce ethanol that fills the tank of a sports utility vehicle can feed a person for a year.
The increase in production of ethanol from corn in USA accounts for about 20 percent of last year's 13-billion bushel corn production. That percentage is expected to increase to 30 percent for the next crop year ending August 31,2009. The impact of this
increased production of ethanol on food availability is conspicuous. World Bank and IMF have sounded a larger alarm. In the spring meeting, WB president Robert Zoellick said: "We estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. This is not just a question about short-term needs, as important as those are. This is about ensuring that future generations don't pay a price too."
IMF head Dominque Strauss-Kahn sounded even more ominous. He warned: "As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war."
The war that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has hinted at could be prefixed with a "civil" as well, as protests have erupted in many countries, including Egypt, Cameroon. Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Indonesia. In Pakistan and Thailand, troops have been deployed to prevent the seizure of food, especially rice, from fields and warehouses.
How much are we armed for this whirlpool, that is closing in to swallow us and upset the stability that we have gained over decades with hard labour? It is probably time to glorify agriculture, the basic agriculture, where farmers toiled to grow staples, and not a commodity for the highest market value -- the cash crops -- and thereby could pacify the national anxiety, and engender confidence, with a sense of security about food.
As Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group comments on the importance of food stocks in the coming days: "Those who have food are going to have a big edge."
A naturally gifted delta, Bangladesh may well be ahead in the race for food in the future world.