And take a look at the U.S., for example.  The food industry produces something like 4000 calories per person per day, but still millions go hungry or are malnourished.  

See Food First's 12 Myths about Hunger for more detail.

meander: People generally don't go hungry because of a macro-level shortage of food.

As usual, it will be the poor who will suffer, as they are forced to pay more.  

Already, sugar and palm oil are experiencing shortages and higher prices because of their use as biofuels.

Widespread use of crops for biofuel will put a severe strain on an already stressed agricultural system. There will be increased demand for farmland, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Continual intensive cropping is not going to do the soil any good.  And as Lester Brown keeps warning, we are entering a period of food shortages.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

I agree with you that the basic question is whether to power our our current car culture with biofuels -- a suicidal endeavor in my mind.

On the other hand, there is a big difference between the crops used for biofuels. Corn is not that efficient and is a heavy nitrogen feeder. The latest thinking seems to be that the future lies with grasses and trees - crops that can be grown with fewer inputs and in areas not suited for food crops.  Using them would put less pressure on the food supply.

According to Danielle Murray at Earth Policy Institute:

If ethanol is to become a major part of the world fuel supply without competing with food and forests, its primary source will not be grains or even sugar crops; it will be more-abundant and land-efficient cellulosic feedstocks, such as agricultural and forest residues, grasses, and fast-growing trees...

"Energy crops," such as hardy grasses and fast-growing trees, have higher ethanol yields and better energy balances than conventional starch crops. One likely candidate is switchgrass, a tall perennial grass used by farmers to protect land from erosion. It requires minimal irrigation, fertilizer, or herbicides but yields 2-3 times more ethanol per acre than corn does. Such crops could potentially be harvested on marginal land, avoiding the conversion of healthy cropland or forests to energy-crop production.

Still, with world energy demands rising, biofuels will meet only a fraction of fuel needs unless there are substantial improvements in vehicle fuel economy.

Supermarkets and Service Stations Now Competing for Grain

Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United States, leaving only 6 million tons to satisfy the world's growing food needs.

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people.

From Lester:

For the 2 billion poorest people in the world, many of whom spend half or more of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life threatening. The broader risk is that rising food prices could spread hunger and generate political instability in low-income countries that import grain, such as Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Mexico. This instability could in turn disrupt global economic progress. If ethanol distillery demand for grain continues its explosive growth, driving grain prices to dangerous highs, the U.S. government may have to intervene in the unfolding global conflict over food between affluent motorists and low-income consumers.

There are alternatives to using food-based fuels. For example, the equivalent of the 3 percent gain in automotive fuel supplies from ethanol could be achieved several times over--and at a fraction of the cost--simply by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20 percent. Investing in public transport could reduce overall dependence on cars.

There are other fuel options as well. While there are no alternatives to food for people, there is an alternative source of fuel for cars, one that involves shifting to highly efficient gas-electric hybrid plug-ins. This would enable motorists to do short-distance driving, such as the daily commute, with electricity. If wind-rich countries such as the United States, China, and those in Europe invest heavily in wind farms to feed cheap electricity into the grid, cars could run primarily on wind energy, and at the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 a gallon.

Food will not replace oil simply because there is not enough land to produce enough fuel, assuming we grown the tradiational crops.

I expect using food to make fuel will have a bullish effect on grain prices.  Has anyone compared grain prices as a function of time?  Those prices have been pretty flat the last fifty years.  Having grown up on a South Dakota farm that my family still operates I understand how thin the profits are from that operation.

Corn's biggest use is to make soda pop, not sure how important that is for the world's food supply.

Most of the corn that's grown is grown as a result of the agricultural policy instituted by Earl Butz during the 70's (a very poor one at that). Thank you, Michael Pollan, for the research that he has done. It goes to feed cattle, create HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and a myriad of other crap that 'we' get in our food supply. The efficiency of output is increasing every year just as the farmers who are growing it are going further and further into debt every year.

That means that there is too much crappy corn being grown, which can either go to beef (poor cattle), mass consumers (poor cattle, sorry...) or cars... Clearly, it's already going to the last, so it's not a drastic switch from corn to switchgrass, or willow, or whatever else. There is no reason to say that prices for actual food (i.e. fresh food that has actual nutrients rather than folate and niacin added at an obscure step during a factory process) will go up. Actually, the prices of the food will go up, but that's due to a shortage of fuel to drive the machinery and trucks for delivery, which actually would make farmer's markets all the more attractive.

I'm starting to rant. The world hunger has never been a production issue, just like someone has already stated. We are currently overproducing calories (in terms of corn, soybeans and sugarcane) and these calories need to go somewhere, but apparently not to the starving people. There are currently more people (according to WHO) that are suffering from obesity than from malnutrition (1 billion vs. 800 million), clearly driving the point of distribution issue.

One more thing. Why are higher food prices a bad thing in our land of cheap'n'plenty?

atreyger: Why are higher food prices a bad thing in our land of cheap'n'plenty?

atreyger: The world hunger has never been a production issue

The problem is that we only have a limited amounted of cropland and inputs for agriculture.

The demand for biofuel will be insatiable, considering the projected growth in numbers of automobiles and the rising price of petroleum.  

Shell has acted with unexpected wisdom in distancing themselves from the use of food crops.  

Bart
Energy Bulletin

The only big shot that favors the same plan I do.  Good for you Lester.

He also pointed out that lack of water will doom fuel farming anyway.  Fossil fuel/chemical farming is just to water wastefull to expand enough to signifigantly change any part of the soaring fuel cost equation.

Ethanol prices are soaring even ahead of gas prices.  As I predicted over and over again.  

I wonder if Lester would like the Prairie National Park (wind farm) idea?  I bet he would.

It's a sure bet that large corporations are gobbling up wind farm sdites on the great plains and driving up prices in a speculative bubble that will allow the big cap players to delay wind as long as they want to.

Only a government lease program on the new national park land can stop those kinds of monopoly games that will doom the globe to climate disaster.  The free market in energy is a myth.  Anti-trust law enforcement  has evaporated in the heated neoconman corporate bribery boiler that this administration has made of the government of these US of A.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Clearly, Bart, you are looking at food as a commodity rather than an edible organism. That is clear in the fact that you use three 'foods' that are mass-produced, long-term unsustainable and quite damaging to the environment and people that consume them. Basically, what you are saying is that conversion of these food sources to fuel will drive up the price of these foods' processed end-products for the consumer (see Doritos, Snicker bars, etc.).

How about rice, beans and squash? These are clearly some of the more important food items for much of developing world (Latin America, at least). How would the production of more corn, soybeans, and sugarcane affect the price of these food items? I think that is a much better question to ask, rather than how much extra our rum, whiskey and McD's will cost.

While I am not Lester Brown (tum-tum-tum, the emperor), I don't think that one person's statement of future doom is going to be the defining reason for me to start thinking that our current overproduction (clearly artificial and damaging) of food items, such as corn, soybeans amd sugarcane is in any danger. Human world production of these three items is both extensive and intensive, and does not necessarily provide appropriate, even if plentiful, nourishment (once again see the fact that there are more obese people in the world than there are malnourished). I do not see any reason for why the current system of overproduction is in any danger in the next twenty plus years, considering that we can keep pumping out new hybrids of corn and soybeans that are better suited to close cropping and drier sites and keep putting out nitrogen on the land. While the 'Green Revolution' has failed in quality of food and the environment, it certainly has not failed in terms of quantity, and the scientists keep going strong with new modifications.

Basically, the way I see it, it is better to convert to a sustainable, intensive agriculture rather than continue complaining about how converting corn to fuel is going to drive up the prices of food. That corn goes to every imaginable junk food that you can think of, it goes to feed the cows and the chickens (something that grass could feed with only a benefit to the soil), creates toxic waste pits, which leach into our streams and rivers and the oceans, killing everything in sight, including humans (blue baby syndrome) and is obviously a poor solution.

And how about the sugarcane? Do you think that the Brazilians where the majority of it is grown, eat much of it? While I am sure that they consume their fair share of rum and sweets, somehow I do not think that sugarcane is a very nourishing substance. If you want to talk about food, let's talk about things that will provide us with necessary amino acids and vitamins, and let's leave commodities out of the equation.

atreyger: it is better to convert to a sustainable, intensive agriculture rather than continue complaining about how converting corn to fuel is going to drive up the prices of food. That corn goes to every imaginable junk food that you can think of,

We would be investing in an expensive energy infrastructure which would acquire an intertia of its own. Farmers and processors profiting from the system would be loath to change it.  Drivers would have invested in vehicles that run on ethanol. The choices made now will be with us for quite a while.

Maybe a better way to phrase the problem is not whether the price of commodity corn will go up, but whether good cropland will be dedicated to frivolous use.

atreyger: I do not see any reason for why the current system of overproduction is in any danger in the next twenty plus years...

• Water shortages, as amazingdrx mentioned.
• Climate disruption (which will mean in California - where I live - an irregular supply of water)
• Continued population growth.
• Peak oil

Not only will industrial agriculture be pressured, but agriculture of all kinds.

atreyger: If you want to talk about food, let's talk about things that will provide us with necessary amino acids and vitamins, and let's leave commodities out of the equation

Was this always so?  No. It's a recent development made possible by cheap oil.  

Will it always be so?  No. The era of cheap oil is coming to an end. The kind of agriculture you and I prefer will be making a comeback, since it is less dependent on cheap inputs. Food will become more expensive, and hopefully farmers will be better compensated.

Corn ethanol is just the last gasp of a passing era.

Bart
Energy Bulletin