Sayan’s BlogWorld

This Foreign Affairs article points out that massive increase in demand of biofuels like ethanol may displace food crops and increasing food prices.

filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn — which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year

The irony is that automobiles like SUVs are a big cause of global warming…Is this a case of stealing from the poor to solve the rich man’s problem? We need better ways of harvesting solar energy than food crop-based biofuels.

Strangely, this reminds me vaguely of something I read about India’s Green Revolution many years ago- The Green Revolution introduced crops which were shorter than the traditional crop breeds- this resulted in reduced production of straw/hay for fodder… the scarcity of fodder was the impetus for introducing factory-produced fodder.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under all, conservation, nature, science, social, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.