NEWS - "Egyptian government urges end to biofuel subsidies"
"The U.S. and Europe should stop encouraging the growth of maize and
other crops for the production of biofuels, a practice that is pushing
up food prices and hitting the world's poorest people, Egyptian
Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieldin said Wednesday."
http://www.checkbiotech.org/green_News_Biofuels.aspx?infoId=17306
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Parallels - Biofuels and Mao's "Great Leap Forward"
An essential economic point that political leaders and the media have
missed about the world food crisis is that rising oil prices have not
shrunk the human food supply, but biofuel production has! Higher oil
prices naturally raise the cost of everything that takes energy to
produce, but in addition to that United States and European Union
policies have actually shrunk the human food supply by artificially
mandating a shift of agricultural resources to biofuel production.
President Bush's 2007 "Energy Independence and Security Act" turns our
food into fuel, and is reminiscent of Chairman Mao Tse Tung's 1958
Five Year Plan, known as "The Great Leap Forward," in which China's
agricultural based economy was forcefully shifted to greater
industrial output.
The higher food prices of 2008 cannot easily lead to increased food
production, as would normally be the case, because of Bush's
government mandated shift of land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment,
and manpower resources to biofuel production. With biofuels out of
the equation, farmers could have easily passed higher energy costs on
to consumers without shrinking food production, and they could have
increased food output to meet the greater demands of an expanding
world population. Higher prices normally give producers a strong
incentive signal to make more of a product so they can make more
money. Now those incentive signals are confused and ineffective
because of forced government biofuel mandates. Farmers must now
produce for the automotive biofuel market as well as for the human
food market.
Chairman Mao Tse Tung banned private farms in 1958 in his shift to
communes and greater industrial output at the expense of agriculture.
This led to a 15% drop in grain production in 1959 and another 10%
reduction in 1960. Biofuel production has consumed an estimated 33%
to 38% of America's corn crop, depending of whose statistics you
believe, and has caused many farmers to grow corn to make ethanol
instead of wheat to make bread. Bush's 2007 biofuel mandates have
called for even more of our food to be turned into fuel in the name of
"energy independence," but at the tragic cost of global food supply
security. Mao's top-down meddling in agricultural production was
compounded by droughts and storms, just as Bush's top-down meddling in
agriculture has been compounded by a drought in Australia which
reduced wheat production, and a winter storm in China which caused
major crop failures. A convergence of forces turned Mao's well
meaning 1958 plan into the greatest famine in history, and resulted in
the death by starvation of tens of millions of Chinese people. Bush's
well meaning 2007 "Energy Independence and Security Act" may
eventually take even more lives worldwide.
MORE FACTS ABOUT BIOFUELS -
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html
Christopher Calder
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