Wow! The British newspaper, The Guardian, published a claim over the holiday weekend that it has obtained a confidential copy of a World Bank study that blames ethanol for 75 percent of the increase in world food costs.
Of course, since the cited report is top secret with unnamed authors, there’s no methodology or mathematics to back up this claim, which is wildly out of balance with even the highest end of prior reports.
And the math should prove to be quite interesting, given what we know about the total percentage of food prices that are attributable to raw materials. Even if you buy into the woes of poor, poor Tyson paying through the nose for chicken feed, the balance sheet still shows only about 13 percent of the supermarket costs of poultry comes from the cost of feeding birds to harvest weight.
Interesting note: the paper claims the report dates back to April, but the “leak” came just in time for the summit of the top eight industrialized nations on the issue of biofuels and the food crisis.
Call me cynical, but that makes my phony report radar go “beep.”
4 Comments
Greikspoor, defending ethanol?
Color me shocked…
The only surprise here is that it took her so long to do it!
And just for the record, the cost of my chicken feed this year has more than tripled. I’m no fan of Tyson, but facts are facts. It went from a little over three dollars a bag to over ten dollars a bag.
I’m rethinking having broilers next year, and I just raise them for myself and my friends. Imagine what big ag will do.
Ten dollar whole chickens. Coming soon to a store near you. Is it ethanol’s fault? Not entirely. But it certainly plays a role.
On a recent blog thread relating to ethanol, there was considerable debate about how much water is used for the manufacture of ethanol and for the irrigation of the corn used for the ethanol process.
I have been told recently that we really don’t know how much water is being pumped out of our deep underground aquifers. The reason? The state of Kansas has only one or two inspectors traveling around the state checking the water pumps and resulting records on thousands and thousands of water withdrawal pumps.
More importantly the Kansas Geological Survey and water district records show the aquifer levels are generally dropping. This is particularly true in western Kansas where practically no recharge of these aquifers takes place due to the depth and cover by many feet of limestone.
For me, a marker was the former artisan springs that jumped out of the ground to feed the Meade County State Lake. I understand these springs which were forced up from the Ogallala aquifer … are no longer running water because of the lowering of the aquifer.
For Kansans who are proud of our state and want it to continue as we have known it in the past, draining these aquifers for a temporary usage to manufacture ethanol is a complete violation of our Kansas environment. We don’t want our state to once again become part of the Great American Desert.
P.J. Griekspoor, EAGLE environment reporter: I wish you would do a turn around and see the dangers to Kansas, America and the world from production of ethanol. Then use your powerful position to affect public opinion … for the good … by studying and publicizing the real dangers of ethanol production.
P.J., you have the opportunity to do good, shine a light on the bad guys and save the world. Will you do it?