Feed The Beast Starve the People

August 29, 2007 12:34 AM

The looming food crisis is already upon us. The Institute for Food and Development - Food First - whose Policy is to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger is joined by Green Horizon talking about a global food crisis emerging. By promoting biodiesel as a substitute, we have missed the fact that it is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces. As a result the line between the food economy and energy economy has become blurred. In the United States and Canada, governments are manipulating the market in the biofuels industry.
posted by adamvasco (76 comments total)

Somehow this doesn't surprise me.

I don't see a cataclysm of Malthusian proportions, but there will be a definite redadjustment of dietary expectations. We simply can not support 6+ billion people on a North American diet of beef and animal proteins-- and the way we overfish is simply contemptible.

I hope there's a way to do it without a lot of people dying, but that's not likely. I hope I am in a position to weather it fairly comfortably.
posted by SeanMac at 12:47 AM on August 29, 2007

While the Green Revolution handled a food supply crunch that many predicted would have caused a population collapse in the mid-1900s, it's not clear there is similar leadership pushing an alternative energy revolution, or technologies which address these anticipated food shortages.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:52 AM on August 29, 2007

No worries, I'm sure the invisible hand of the market will take care of it.

*giant invisible hand crashes down, kills 2 billion people*
posted by Avenger at 1:33 AM on August 29, 2007 [4 favorites]

Well, the green revolution actually caused the blurring of the food and energy economies, though unsustainable farming practices such as slash-and-burn obviously haven't been helping things.

We simply can not support 6+ billion people on a North American diet of beef and animal proteins-- and the way we overfish is simply contemptible.

This really doesn't have much of anything to do with it, as we aren't trying to support 6 billion on hamburgers. The farming practices of developed nations has driven up the cost of oil and consequently the cost of food in other nations, but the inefficient use of land in North America definitely doesn't directly effect the 5 billion on the planet who barely eat meat at all.
posted by mek at 1:42 AM on August 29, 2007

BBC News: Feb 1, 2007
Mexicans stage tortilla protest
The price of the flat corn bread, the main source of calories for many poor Mexicans, recently rose by over 400%. ... Mexico's Economy Minister Eduardo Sojo has said that with more US corn being diverted into ethanol production, supply is dwindling.


posted by sebastienbailard at 1:59 AM on August 29, 2007

Sorry, I want to modify that. North American farming practices certainly modify supply globally, of both grain (important) and especially oil (mucho mucho important). The latter is a key component of virtually all agriculture (tractors, fertilizers, etc) and consequently buying an SUV can literally cause someone to starve to death. Just not directly.

A large part of the problem is that global food markets are damn fucked up. Developing nations work in Nike factories and buy imported grain to eat, instead of working in agriculture. I'd happily blame globalization and free trade for causing this crisis, but then i'd be a hippy.
posted by mek at 2:00 AM on August 29, 2007

Corn is a kind of outrageous example, as it's abundant and cheap due to heavy subsidies, and so countries like Mexico have become quite dependent on the USA's exports. However, corn isn't a good use of land either, and consumes more oil in its production than other crops would; so in this case we had two evils (corn was made artificially cheap, and consumed high amounts of petroleum) and added a third (now we're not even eating it!). Global food supply is a mess.
posted by mek at 2:08 AM on August 29, 2007

mek: individual farming is very inefficient; like it or not, we have to use large factory farms to get the full yield out of them. So working in a Nike factory and importing your food makes perfect sense; it's the old thing about specialization of labor.

The problem, as the FPP says, is that cars are starting to compete with people for food, and cars are very, very hungry.

Overall, biodiesel appears to be a really bad idea. Because most of the energy of the plants is extracted and burned, that means it comes from the soil, meaning the soil needs fertilization.... and fertilizer comes from oil. The overall net effect probably isn't even energy positive, and we're likely to starve millions of people trying to do it. It's just a thoroughly bad idea.

It all comes down to this basic truth: civilization is running on a gigantic chemical battery. We get a vast amount of 'free' energy from oil. The only way we can continue to support anything like that lifestyle is going to be with nuclear or fusion power... and so far, only nuclear works.

We also need to conserve, of course, but we have such a gigantic input of 'free' energy from oil that gearing down to sustainable sources will be extremely painful... a couple billion starving isn't particularly farfetched. We're extremely dependent on oil for food production.

The likely consequence of a couple billion people threatened with starvation left as an exercise for the reader.

Year 2007 people chanting 'no nukes! no nukes!' might as well be chanting 'no food! no food!'
posted by Malor at 2:13 AM on August 29, 2007 [4 favorites]

Well, the green revolution actually caused the blurring of the food and energy economies, though unsustainable farming practices such as slash-and-burn obviously haven't been helping things.

Given that part of the Green Revolution involves fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide usage, both of which require crude oil as a feedstock, it's not clear that this "revolution" is sustainable in the long-term. It might get the species to a technological point where the next revolution could occur though. Progress is blind like that.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:25 AM on August 29, 2007

It was just two years ago and I was reading that there was such a glut of corn they where looking into ways to turn it into clothing (socks, was the apparel of choice). I agree that currently corn based bio-fuel is not that effective, hell it still requires more energy to make it than it produces. There are some recent indications that switch grass and fast growing poplar will be much much more efficient for bio-fuel, then we'll go back to growing too much damned corn. I don't think bio-fuel is the fundamental cause for any food crisis that may arise, merely a symptom. Once we switched to global and commercial culture the concentration of wealth and power was exacerbated to such a tremendous proportion most of us have no visceral understanding outside of "statistics", 85% of global wealth controlled by 10% of population (that's you and me, not just Bill Gates). Global hunger has, to a large part, been a problem of politics and policy, usually reinforced by corporate economic factors. If we truly wanted to we could adequately feed the global population, it really doesn't take all that much, it is just seems that we, and the leaders that represent us much prefer to blow people up rather than feed them.
posted by edgeways at 2:29 AM on August 29, 2007

Someone convince me this isn't just big oil spreading FUD about the shift to biofuels. I'll start to worry when housing developments get plowed back into cropland, or at least we stop seeing massive amounts of high yield land turned into subdivisions. Farmers in the third world have suffered tremendously at the oversupply of food from US and Europe. By consuming this oversupply for fuels we can help agriculture develop in the rest of the world. Also by building the market for ethanol and biodiesel, using current suboptimal technologies; we create an incentive for new more efficient technologies to replace them (switch grass, algea, genetically modified bacteria, etc).
posted by humanfont at 2:41 AM on August 29, 2007

mek writes "nd consumes more oil in its production than other crops would"

That's interesting to me because I am not aware of how much oil is needed in fertilization and in making a farm yeld good quantities, so I didn't think about how relatively important it may be. Yet using oil-fed corn to produce ethanol seems to be utterly stupid (just convert the oil ?) unless it enables capturing enough solar energy to make it energy efficient, which I doubt.

Regardless, if the demand for ethanol exists and the cost-price differential is interesting, bye bye tortillas for cheap ; which may eventually generate enough social pressure to generate demands of change , which is clearly NOT wanted considering that even romans leaders knew well that "panem et circenses" is what one really need to placate masses.

Malor writes "individual farming is very inefficient; like it or not, we have to use large factory farms to get the full yield out of them."

In terms of money needed to get an unit of product, I guess you are correct. Also probably in terms of quantity of goods and machinery use per unit of yeld. Yet let's consider that , I believe, many fields are now being managed by very few extremely specialized companies and possibily exploited by few powerful rentiers. What if some level of efficiency is made avaiable to a number of less ignorant peons ?
posted by elpapacito at 2:45 AM on August 29, 2007

a positive perspective that i was just pondering would be the effects of pumping oil money bound for either the giant oil companies or arab shieks and middle eastern countries would instead be flowing domestically to farmers in these corn belts which could in an nutshell have a good flow on effect for the american economy.
It would also mean a redistribution of wealth to other currently poor agricultural nations for example found in south america.

it could also more excitingly mean that 'The Beverly Hillbillies' would happen in real life!! ide love to see hilbilly hick farmer joe from kentucky chopping in half a new Maybach to fit a tray, a dog house and some moonshine equipment on the back and go cruising down the boulevard in LA. Of course that stereotype doesn't really happen in real life but who knows, give a hick a great wad of cash and im sure hilarity would follow.
*Just hold back on the popcorn as us city folk plebs wouldnt be able to afford it......*
posted by ItsaMario at 2:51 AM on August 29, 2007

humanfont : Someone convince me this isn't just big oil spreading FUD about the shift to biofuels.

If you google:
ethanol fuel balance "environmental group"
you'll get some decent hits. Many groups think that using natual gas to grow corn, or cutting down orangutan habitat to grow oil palm trees is irresponsible, even if they think that cellulosic ethanol or some GM'ed petro-algae would be kind of cool. The Union of Concerned Scientists take a nuanced postion: they think normal ethanol is a good pathway for developing the infrastructure and technology for cellulosic ethanol.

No presidential candidate is going to piss off the corn farmers before the next election by saying anything other than
"Corn = Good", mind.

I'd love to see some provocateurs drive a Hummer across the US fueled by bread loaves (or tortillas), just to highlight what we're doing.
posted by sebastienbailard at 3:27 AM on August 29, 2007

Biofuels...cell phones killing bees...one way or another we're all toast.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:14 AM on August 29, 2007

Year 2007 people chanting 'no nukes! no nukes!' might as well be chanting 'no food! no food!'

What he said. Humanity craves energy as well as food, and well off Humanity craves energy far more than food.

Never mind the cost of burning biofuels.
posted by eriko at 4:33 AM on August 29, 2007

I've often wondered how much water growing corn uses, especially when you consider most corn crops are in the area of the Great Plains Aquifer, already a great concern. Although the looming energy crisis is important, possible looming water troubles prey more heavily in my mind.

Regardless of whether or not you think it's good, corn is still a VERY limited fuel. And essentially, we're still burning carbon. We need to come up with a better long-term solution. I fear this kind of thinking stuck concentrating on liquid fuels; it's not revolutionary enough to change anything.
posted by barchan at 4:37 AM on August 29, 2007

Last time I stuck my nose in this debate, here's what I was given:

1. Making ethanol directly from corn kernels: bad, because it uses more fossil fuel than it replaces.
2. Making ethanol from corn stalks, leaves, cobs, leftovers, etc.: not so bad, but nobody knows how to do this efficiently yet.

Was that the case? Is it still?

Ethanol is highly politically charged around here--politicians who question the ethanol industry risk losing the farm vote.

I had heard about switchgrass, but hadn't heard about the palm oil controversy before.
posted by gimonca at 4:46 AM on August 29, 2007

so far, only nuclear works

Another fact to check: is it true that if we converted all our energy use to nuclear, we'd run out of nuclear fuel in a decade and a half?
posted by gimonca at 4:48 AM on August 29, 2007

Monbiot is a twit and obvious troll. He describes how bad the effects of poor land management by third world elites are, and that's all. The exact same thing would happen (and does happen) with ANY profitable crop. His 400 year calculation is also plain wrong. I'd go into this more, but I think that we've had this conversation.

Food stocks are low. This is an effect of business-streamlining, and will get worse with reduced subsidies for uneconomical crops. You don't make money having big stores of grain; it's much more efficient to produce the right amount you need and to produce it closer to when you need it. Fisheries may need a break, but it's a one liner claim. It's difficult to move from that.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 4:51 AM on August 29, 2007

Gimonca: I don't know about the "decade and a half" but that makes sense, considering ore quantity for nuclear use are very much limited. And if you think coal mines are bad, obviously you've never seen an uranium mine. Other nuclear ore mining is just as horrific because it takes a lot of earth moving to get to a little ore.
posted by barchan at 4:57 AM on August 29, 2007

I'd happily blame globalization and free trade for causing this crisis, but then i'd be a hippy.

And a moron, too.

Given that part of the Green Revolution involves fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide usage, both of which require crude oil as a feedstock

I see this claim all the time, but I can't figure out, really, how fertilizers are intensive users of crude oil and its derivatives. Of course, ammonia uses a lot of NG, but potash and phosphate are both mined. So where does the substantial (in global terms) use of petroleum as a fertilizer feedstock come in? (Not snarking. Serious question.)

Someone convince me this isn't just big oil spreading FUD about the shift to biofuels.

Pull up a stock chart of any fertilizer company, seed company, or farm equipment company.

I don't think bio-fuel is the fundamental cause for any food crisis that may arise, merely a symptom.

Once an agricultural market gets tight, small changes in demand can really move the needle. Chinese prosperity manifests itself in a greater demand for meat, which is far more land (and feedstuff) intensive, while US corn ethanol policy tightens markets even more. Now, we have domestic farmers planting corn-on-corn, rather than rotating their crops, because the corn market is so strong. This will result in even more problems.

This, of course, is intensifying fertilizer use as corn has a much higher fertilizer uptake than do soybeans or wheat. You can see some tables here. (pdf)

And "biofuel" isn't the problem, as Brazilian sugar ethanol is fantastic. The problem is North American corn ethanol, which is a racket and a half.

I'd encourage many of the commenters here to learn a bit more about the issue before jerking their knees.
posted by Kwantsar at 5:07 AM on August 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

I've said it before, I'll say it again, corn ethanol or for that matter any food-based ethanol is immoral. You are starving people to death in order to drive a few more fucking miles in your shit wagon. Not only that but your hard earned cash is going not only to the oil companies but their partners in this crime against humanity, ADM.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:12 AM on August 29, 2007

If there is anything this thread doesn't need it has to be total bullshit violin playing comments like yours Pollomacho. Who will think of the children???

The area in which my mother lives still has a lot of farming and this year I noticed that the majority of the cornfields all have interesting signs denoting what company is getting the corn at harvest time. They aren't food companies.
posted by a3matrix at 5:35 AM on August 29, 2007

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.
posted by adamvasco at 5:58 AM on August 29, 2007

Another fact to check: is it true that if we converted all our energy use to nuclear, we'd run out of nuclear fuel in a decade and a half?

Not from what I've read. Apparently, if we use breeder reactors, we can use existing known fuel stocks to power us for hundreds of years. There are also designs for reactors that use other radioactive elements, like thorium, which are extremely abundant.

Even assuming a 10%/year energy demand growth (which is wildly high: 5% is closer over the long term), there should be enough nuclear fuel to last a good long while. The total lifespan should at least match that of oil's, 150ish years.

Past a certain point, that 5% growth rate will consume ANY amount of energy available, no matter how enormous, so ultimately we're gonna have to bring it down to zero or negative. No matter what source we use, no matter how abundant, that's still going to be true. Adding 5% every year, given enough years, we could take all the power in the Universe.

Ultimately, nuclear just has to last until either we master fusion power, or get solar working well enough to sustain high-energy industries and make more solar cells; at the moment, it's my understanding that solar doesn't have the energy density necessary to make more solar. Any given field will wear out before it generates enough power to even replace itself, much less give off surplus power for other uses.

Solar is coming along pretty fast, so that may no longer be true, but as of four or five years ago, it was not self-sustaining.
posted by Malor at 6:03 AM on August 29, 2007

The invisible hand of the market is really doing what it's supposed to do: optimize profits. Morality isn't a part of this optimization, at least not directly as an input with very high gain. The problem was taking a raw food item and making it a commodity in the energy sector through legislation.

Free markets aren't the answer for everything, but free markets are very effective. Sometimes what they're effective at is counterproductive to your actual goal. In this case legislators thought they could game the energy sector by providing a cheap source of energy and also buy some votes from farmers in the process. Unfortunately energy sells based on market price, not raw material source which in turn drives the price of the raw materials, and in this case, a decision between whether to sell corn at a low cost as food, or at a higher cost as a raw material for ethanol.
posted by substrate at 6:07 AM on August 29, 2007

kwantsar: I believe the fosil fuel consumption re: fertilizer is all in the ammonia production, as well as in the relocation of the fertilizers to the individual farms. As well, there's the fuel to power the farming equipment, the fuel to make the irrigation pipes, the fuel to power the pump to bring up the water from increasingly beneath. Lastly, the fuel to bring the food to market. Oh, and less ammonia gets produced locally because of natural gas price increases, so there's also an increased shipping charge.

Malor: individual farming might currently appear to be inefficient, but what about the costs to deal with soil errosion? As well, if one broke out the cost of the power contained in oil with the equivalent number of person-hours of labor, I'll bet there are more inefficiencies in the ICE tractor. But hey, oil is cheap, and we'll have it forever, so viva le green revolution.

Or, failing oil, we can solve a bunch of problems. Bring back debtor's prisons for all of those caught up in unaffordable mortgages, and put them to work on the farms!
posted by nobeagle at 6:08 AM on August 29, 2007

Ben Franklin: On the Price of Corn

The price of corn since 1973: $2.50 +/- $1.00, that's without adjustment for inflation. I wish I could find a graph going back farther, as far as I know the price of corn has not risen since the depression.
The corn subsidy that the farmers get is a land set aside program where they are paid not to grow corn. Right now farmers all over the world are either subsidized by their own governments or driven out of business by the cheap US crops.
posted by 445supermag at 6:12 AM on August 29, 2007

So where does the substantial (in global terms) use of petroleum as a fertilizer feedstock come in? (Not snarking. Serious question.)

Well, this source says:

The biggest culprit of fossil fuel usage in industrial farming is not transporting food or fueling machinery; it’s chemicals. As much as forty percent of energy used in the food system goes towards the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. ^xii Fertilizers are synthesized from atmospheric nitrogen and natural gas, a process that takes a significant amount of energy. Producing and distributing them requires an average of 5.5 gallons of fossil fuels per acre. ^xiii

Footnote 12 goes to page 40 of Life Cycle-Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S. Food System. (PDF, pretty long).

Footnote 13 points to The Oil We Eat at Harper's, which I'm reading now.
posted by Malor at 6:15 AM on August 29, 2007

Oh, dammit, I forgot to add:

This source, on the other hand, claims that we can use any energy source to make fertilizer.
posted by Malor at 6:18 AM on August 29, 2007

And "biofuel" isn't the problem, as Brazilian sugar ethanol is fantastic. The problem is North American corn ethanol, which is a racket and a half.

Kwantsar: Brazilian sugar ethanol is, if anything, a worse idea than corn ethanol (which I agree is a shit idea). Sugarcane is one of the most water-intensive crops in existence, and the over-irrigation required to consistently grow the amounts required will slowly kill off their farmland by salinization (as has happened in India, and indeed is starting to show in many areas of the US midwest), not to mention the impact the water demand has on their river flows (which has its own far-reaching economic and environmental implications).

Yes, biofuel IS the problem. There is currently no good way to make biofuel without contributing to a (near) future crisis of either land or water.
posted by chundo at 6:25 AM on August 29, 2007

The moral outrage is misplaced. If people are starving for gas for your SUV, then they were starving 10 years ago for your twinkies and quarter pounder. A huge chunk of our corn production isn't going into tortillas or ethanol, it is going for high fructose corn syrup for junk food and as feed for cows. We are seeing an epidemic of obseity as a direct result of cheap beef and twinkies. Raising the price of corn is good for our wastelines. A few less cows would be great for slowing global warming.

Coke, Exxon, and the crowd have a lot to lose from ethanol. I'm sure their PR machines are working overtime to get stories like this media play. I'm sure they are funding research right now to give to organizations like Food First.
posted by humanfont at 6:29 AM on August 29, 2007

The nitrogen intensity of corn production is increasing by about 1% per year, while there is no discernible time trend to either phosphate or
potash intensity. These patterns are consistent with longer-term trends – over several decades, nitrogen use has been rising while phosphate and potash use have been roughly constant (Runge 2002). This implies that the serious, long-term problems of nitrogen runoff and its impacts on ground water in general, and the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico in particular, are only getting worse, albeit gradually

Just....look around you !

The Haber process now produces 100 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea. 1% of the world's annual energy supply is consumed in the Haber process.[1] That fertilizer is responsible for sustaining 40% of the Earth's population, as well as various deleterious environmental consequences.

Boy oh boy ...I guess growing lupins just doesn't cut it anymore ?
posted by elpapacito at 6:31 AM on August 29, 2007

Horrors! Alarmist agitprop from farming trade groups and lefty protest orgs! Whatever shall we do?!?

The UN's World Food Organisation predicts that demand for biofuels will grow by 170% in the next three years.

That means in three years there will be 2.7 dirty hippies filling their volkswagens with biodiesel in my neighborhood!
posted by electroboy at 6:50 AM on August 29, 2007

electroboy, there's a number of poor Mexicans who would just love to speak with you about what a hard time they're having feeding their children. As in, now.

If you used that same dismissive tone with them, I think you'd be lucky to walk away with intact kneecaps.
posted by Malor at 7:10 AM on August 29, 2007

We are seeing an epidemic of obseity as a direct result of cheap beef and twinkies. Raising the price of corn is good for our wastelines.

Seriously? Causing economic hardship and food shortages for the brown people is OK since we don't have any diet self control?
posted by chundo at 7:23 AM on August 29, 2007

Wow, I can always count on an interesting mixture of lay-science and pop-farming ideas from the Mefi intelligentsia.

Making ethanol from corn stalks, leaves, cobs, leftovers, etc.: not so bad, but nobody knows how to do this efficiently yet.

We can make biofuels from those things, but we've currently got the bandwagon hitched specifically to ethanol.
posted by zennie at 7:28 AM on August 29, 2007

Alright, then, Malor and nobeagle, it seems that my contention (that fert production is is NG intensive, and not really oil intensive) is largely right. The broader point matters from a geopolitical standpoint and probably from an intermediate-term supply standpoint. Less so from a carbon standpoint, of course.

And, chundo, you may be right, but the EROEI of sugar cane (what is it nowadays, 8x?10x?) is so good that it can fund its own desalinization plants.
posted by Kwantsar at 7:32 AM on August 29, 2007

Malor, he tortilla price hike / ethanol relationship is a myth created by politicians in Mexico city to explain away the failures of their tightly controlled corn market. Most of the white corn used in Mexican tortillas is grown in Mexico. This is a seperate market from US yellow corn production.
posted by humanfont at 7:43 AM on August 29, 2007

Wow, I can always count on an interesting mixture of lay-science and pop-farming ideas from the Mefi intelligentsia.

And here's some more!

Efficiency means time as well as money. We need some breakthroughs in cellulosic ethanol production before we will be able to produce it in large enough quantities to be competitive. It currently requires a much longer multi-step digestion process to produce usable ethanol, which corn does not require due to the pre-existing concentration of simple sugars in the kernels.

So yes, we may have our wagon hitched to corn ethanol right now, but that does not change the fact that cellulosic ethanol mass-production is not ready for prime-time.
posted by chundo at 7:49 AM on August 29, 2007

I says we are hitched to ethanol. Ethanol not being the only thing that can run a generator. We can make other stuff, but ethanol production requires sugar, which is why we're so hep to the starchy corn. Cellulose is technically made of sugar molecules, but nothing on the planet naturally unlocks the sugar. We have lots of bugs that can make other things from cellulose. Just not ethanol. Therefore, it makes such good sense that we pursue ethanol, when cellulose is the most abundant molecule in nature and we don't know how to make ethanol from it?
posted by zennie at 7:54 AM on August 29, 2007

Alright, then, Malor and nobeagle, it seems that my contention (that fert production is is NG intensive, and not really oil intensive)

Natural gas is a 'waste product' of oilfields.
posted by Malor at 7:58 AM on August 29, 2007

And a huge input into the tar sands, so it's going to be even more in demand...
posted by anthill at 8:27 AM on August 29, 2007

Out of curiosity is there any way that humanity is going to survive the next 100 years? I ask because if the coolest thing humanity will end up producing before we extinctify ourselves winds up being the Nintendo Wii then I'm going to go home and burn all my scifi novels.
posted by shmegegge at 8:27 AM on August 29, 2007

Out of curiosity is there any way that humanity is going to survive the next 100 years?

Doubtful. Buy more Wii games.
posted by chundo at 8:44 AM on August 29, 2007

Wow, I can always count on an interesting mixture of lay-science and pop-farming ideas from the Mefi intelligentsia.

Dude, I'm asking an honest question, not trying to make some rhetorical flourish. If you've got info on the subject, step up to the mike and help us out. Now's your chance.
posted by gimonca at 8:57 AM on August 29, 2007

Out of curiosity is there any way that humanity is going to survive the next 100 years?

I think there's little doubt that humanity will survive. An open question, however, is whether large-scale civilization will. A new Dark Ages would seem entirely possible.
posted by Malor at 9:01 AM on August 29, 2007

maylor: NG is a specifically harvested commodity used extensively for electricity and heat.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 9:02 AM on August 29, 2007

Natural gas is a 'waste product' of oilfields.

No. Sometimes NG is found on top of oil, or if conditions are exactly right within a certain temperature gradient within oil itself, but there are very large natural gas fields in their own right, such as the Hugoton Gas Field in Kansas. Natural gas forms as oil undergoes certain temperature/pressure gradients and "cracks". All carbon reservoirs at some point become gas, it just takes time.

Don't forget coalbed methane, which is also a well used gas source.
posted by barchan at 9:05 AM on August 29, 2007

Darn it all, a robot made out of meat!

*slouches to the didn't preview corner*
posted by barchan at 9:08 AM on August 29, 2007

Can't they work out a way to turn poppies into fuel?
posted by randomination at 9:10 AM on August 29, 2007

Shit.
I'm 21, and for the last decade or so I feel like I'm living in the apocalypse. Is there any point to going through the motions in pursuit of the career and life that I would have if the entire world didn't seem about to go tits up? Is anyone predicting anything other than an enormous shit parade for the next few thousand years?

Why go to college? Why go to night school?
posted by 235w103 at 9:20 AM on August 29, 2007

Can't they work out a way to turn poppies into fuel?

Yeah, but then your cars will go very slowly and sometimes go into park unexpectedly.
posted by shmegegge at 9:21 AM on August 29, 2007

.....I've felt like I've been.
posted by 235w103 at 9:21 AM on August 29, 2007

Malor: sorry for the typo. I was eating some corn chips at the time.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 9:24 AM on August 29, 2007

Is there any point to going through the motions in pursuit of the career and life that I would have if the entire world didn't seem about to go tits up?

Absolutely. You will probably not have the standard of living your parents did, but a good education means you'll have a big leg up in the ratrace. You will be competing for scarce goods -- like food -- with billions of other people, so give yourself every possible advantage.

It's the people at the bottom that suffer the most, so don't be at the bottom. It's very possible to live a happy, productive life without a house filled with electronic gadgets. :) Simply having a refrigerator full of food may be a luxury, so get enough education to be able to live luxuriously.

Plus, you gotta realize, we disaster-predicting people -- and I'm most emphatically one of them -- get it wrong over and over. Someday we're gonna be right, but so far, the smart money is betting against us.
posted by Malor at 9:47 AM on August 29, 2007

robot and barchan: I stand corrected. I looked it up on Wikipedia, but apparently I misunderstood the key sentence.
posted by Malor at 9:50 AM on August 29, 2007

"I'm 21, and for the last decade or so I feel like I'm living in the apocalypse. Is there any point to going through the motions in pursuit of the career and life that I would have if the entire world didn't seem about to go tits up? "

I was 21 in 1987. My friends and I grew up on a steady diet of "Evil Empires" and "2 minutes to midnight." We weren't going to make it, so we didn't even try. Moral of the story: When apocalypse is plan A, always have a plan B.

As for the question of whether the human race will last another 100 years? In the 1970's I was taught in elementary school that pollution had reached a tipping point and that by the time we were adults, we were going to need breathing apparatus and domes. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Next!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:04 AM on August 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

electroboy, there's a number of poor Mexicans who would just love to speak with you...

I think not. They have more pressing concerns. Also, corn prices are coming down.

If you used that same dismissive tone with them, I think you'd be lucky to walk away with intact kneecaps.

Nah. They'd probably be too weak from hunger. Stop trying to get the Mexicans to fight your battles for you, Malor.
posted by electroboy at 10:12 AM on August 29, 2007

Out of curiosity is there any way that humanity is going to survive the next 100 years?

Doubtful. Buy more Wii games.

Fuck it, steal 'em.
posted by Totally Zanzibarin' Ya at 10:12 AM on August 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, but I'm a Cultural Studies major. I feel like I'm taking classes on the French New Wave when I should be buying guns or learning how to farm.
posted by 235w103 at 10:22 AM on August 29, 2007

From Foreign affairs quoted above:
Even major oil exporters that use their petrodollars to purchase food imports, such as Mexico, cannot escape the consequences of the hikes in food prices. In late 2006, the price of tortilla flour in Mexico, which gets 80 percent of its corn imports from the United States, doubled thanks partly to a rise in U.S. corn prices from $2.80 to $4.20 a bushel over the previous several months. (Prices rose even though tortillas are made mainly from Mexican-grown white corn because industrial users of the imported yellow corn, which is used for animal feed and processed foods, started buying the cheaper white variety.) The price surge was exacerbated by speculation and hoarding. With about half of Mexico's 107 million people living in poverty and relying on tortillas as a main source of calories, the public outcry was fierce. In January 2007, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, was forced to cap the prices of corn products
posted by adamvasco at 10:34 AM on August 29, 2007

For Malor, a warm smile: no probs!
posted by barchan at 10:46 AM on August 29, 2007

The area in which my mother lives still has a lot of farming and this year I noticed that the majority of the cornfields all have interesting signs denoting what company is getting the corn at harvest time. They aren't food companies.
posted by a3matrix at 8:35 AM on August 29 [+] [!]

Um, no shit, that's my point. They aren't selling the corn to food companies, though they should be because people need food more than they need fuel and certainly more than they need another veiled subsidy for ADM.

Malor, he tortilla price hike / ethanol relationship is a myth created by politicians in Mexico city to explain away the failures of their tightly controlled corn market. Most of the white corn used in Mexican tortillas is grown in Mexico. This is a seperate market from US yellow corn production.

How about things that are tied to the corn market?
posted by Pollomacho at 11:08 AM on August 29, 2007

humanfont: The moral outrage is misplaced.

O RLY? Let's take a good look at the effects of this charge towards corn ethanol that so many people in America are blindly going along with.

Not only does the production of a gallon of corn ethanol require the burning of more than a gallon of fossil fuel (apparently 1.8 gallons, by a "conservative" estimate), but it has been found to produce more carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas, unlike carbon monoxide -- when burned than petroleum. In addition, that one gallon of corn ethanol contains less energy, so a corn guzzling car will be less fuel efficient than an identical model burning petroleum. Combine that with the negative impact on the environment from planting corn season after season on the same land, as mentioned above, and consider the fact that by producing "flex-fuel" cars, American automakers get CAFE model-line average mileage credits that enable them to continue cranking out enormous gas guzzlers, and you might start to wonder why so many people are acting like this is some kind of "green fuel."

You seem not to care about the people who will starve as corn prices dramatically increase, but keep in mind that that's a side effect of the artificially low costs of corn presently. These in turn are a result of the astronomical farm subsidies that come out of our taxes -- subsidies specifically related to ethanol, on top of the regular farm subsidies, so that Congressmen can cast them as energy bonuses rather than actual farm subsidies. So in 2006, in effect, we paid for $3.4 billion of total subsidies (between growers and blenders) that could probably have been spent on something more worthwhile than a dirty and inefficient fuel.

In summary, we're wasting tax money paying farmers to ruin farmland and grow lower quantities of other, more useful crops that could be used to actually feed starving people but just don't get them paid as much taxpayer money, to produce a fuel that accelerates our rate of petroleum use, decreases our mileage, and pours more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

Anyway, it's revealing to ask yourself cui bono, then compare the results to the list of groups who are cheerleading this fuel. American car companies, farmers, oil companies, and Congressmen: surely they have our best interests at heart!

I mean, I know there are other bad things going on in the world, but is it okay to spend at least a little moral outrage on this one?
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 11:37 AM on August 29, 2007 [9 favorites]

Why go to college? Why go to night school?

Burned all my notebooks. What good are notebooks?

They won't help me survive!
posted by stenseng at 12:02 PM on August 29, 2007

In summary, we're wasting tax money paying farmers to ruin farmland and grow lower quantities of other, more useful crops that could be used to actually feed starving people but just don't get them paid as much taxpayer money, to produce a fuel that accelerates our rate of petroleum use, decreases our mileage, and pours more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

The best summary of US farm and ethanol policy I have ever read.
posted by Kwantsar at 12:04 PM on August 29, 2007

Plenty of disinformation going on here, I see. First of all, it is important to make a difference between:
a) Biofuels;
b) Ethanol; and
c) Corn (maize) ethanol.

Biofuels are a very large category including all fuels from biological origin. Even firewood is a "biofuel", after all. There are manifold renewable and non-renewable processes to obtain biofuels.

Some merely recycle waste products: shavings from the wood industry, for instance, can be compressed into fuel pellets, and methane from fermented manure or garbage, which would otherwise go directly into the atmosphere with a much worse greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, can be extracted and used just as natural gas.

Others are obtained from crops, including in some cases food crops. Oil crops, for instance, can be used as "biodiesel" (something quite different from ethanol), since diesel engines can burn most vegetable oils (jet engines too). Crops containing sugar or starch can be fermented, in a process familiar to mankind since Noah, to produce ethanol (aka booze), which can be burnt in place of gasoline.

Of course, some crops are more carbon-efficient than others for the production of ethanol. Corn is possibly the worst, but it is popular among the US politicians because it brings Midwestern votes. Sugarcane, on the other hand, as used in Brazil, is very efficient, as some have pointed out.

Biofuels in general, and cane ethanol in particular, are interesting enough to have generated quite a strong response from those with the most to lose from a decrease in oil prices. It is not a coincidence that one of the strongest proponents of the idea that biofuels=hunger is none other than Venezuela's Hugo Chávez (who recently got support from his friend Fidel, something plenty ironic considering that Cuba has a long tradition of turning food into ethanol for purely recreational purposes).
posted by Skeptic at 12:26 PM on August 29, 2007

The only "food crisis" around LOO-uh-vul is there's too damn much of it. We should distribute more to where poor people go hungry. Bring on One-World Communism!
posted by davy at 1:05 PM on August 29, 2007

Get the methane from poo! I got lots o' that too!

And yes, ethanol and biodiesel from corn is a stupid idea. Beside the commonsense critiques already noted above, there MUST be corn left to make my fine Kentucky bourbon? ("Have you ever had fine Kentucky bourbon, son?")
posted by davy at 1:09 PM on August 29, 2007

Walk more, dammit! Leave the ethanol to me!
posted by davy at 1:10 PM on August 29, 2007

I think the other problem is that this ignores that most food shortages are because of political reasons, rather than actual shortages.
posted by electroboy at 1:15 PM on August 29, 2007

235w103 writes "Why go to college? Why go to night school?"

Even if it gets to the point that we're hunting rats with sharpened sticks the educated people are going to be in a better position to know how to fire harden that point.
posted by Mitheral at 2:46 PM on August 29, 2007

psh...i have plenty of food and i'm poor. i call bullshit.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:03 PM on August 29, 2007

The NA definition of "poor" does not resemble the poor in developing nations.
posted by mek at 8:13 PM on August 29, 2007