Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian: "Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil."

Is Famine Inevitable?

Is Famine Inevitable? | AlterNet:

Much of our current recessionary intrigue has been aided and abetted by market speculation, from the oil and food sector all the way to the White House itself. For the last seven years, the Bush administration has placed climate crisis on the back burner in existential pursuit of resource wars and an 'American way of life' that has turned from a dream of Hummers, housing and bling into a nightmare of price hikes, foreclosures and layoffs. Mission accomplished.

But someone will have to pick up the pieces, which are going viral fast. In that chaos, food has stopped being our other energy problem and become a chief terror of the future. And considering increasing prices, decreasing dollars and a world that will soon house many more people but feed even less of them, we're probably in for a famine or two before all is said and done.

Though that piece was written with North America in mind, I don't think it will be much different in Southern Africa.

From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence and famine; from locusts, murrain and drought; from battle and murder, and from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord deliver us

as Anglicans used to pray.

In the last few years there has been good rainfall in Southern Africa, and still food prices have risen. But in our climate droughts are inevitable, and what then?

Rome Food Conference

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Rome Food Conference

As government leaders from around the world meet at the U.N. food
conference in Rome, nonprofit organizations have also been meeting
there. The following analysts are available for a limited number of
interviews and are in contact with others in Rome from around the world:

FLAVIO VALENTE, valente@fian.org
Secretary general of FIAN [Food First Information and Action
Network], an international food rights group, Valente said: "I see very
little good coming from the governmental meeting in Rome. The World Bank
and International Monetary Fund are being turned to as if they will help
solve the problem, but it was largely their policies of structural
adjustment that made poor countries lose their capacity to control their
food policies and helped bring on the current crisis. The U.S.
government -- and to some extent the European Union -- are blocking
desperately needed advances; for example any reference in the final
documents to people having a right to food."

RACHEL SMOLKER, rsmolker@globaljusticeecology.org,
also via Orin Langelle, orin.langelle@globalforestcoalition.org
Research biologist at the Global Justice Ecology Project, Smolker
said today: "Unfortunately this crisis is being used as an opportunity
to advance GMOs [genetically modified organisms]. The question of land
is emerging as a central issue and business interests are grabbing it up
for biofuels and other purposes. Millions of people were added to the
ranks of the hungry in the last quarter. Meanwhile, the big agribusiness
companies are making huge profits."
Smolker recently wrote the piece "Agrofuels in the belly of the
hungry beast"
She also wrote "Go Ahead, Blame Biofuels: A switch from fossil fuels
to ethanol and its kin diverts resources from food production, leading
to hunger and destabilization of farming" published in Business Week,

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Genetically-modified food: message from Greenpeace

An important vote on GMOs is due to take place on 7 May in Brussels. The agro-chemical industry wants to get EU permission to grow pesticide-producing maize plants and a GM potato that contains an antibiotic resistant gene. We want EU Commissioners to say NO when they discuss the applications on 7 May. Our petitions, postcards, emails, blog comments and actions have helped bring the EU to this historic moment. Now, this is it!

Can you join us in writing directly to all the European Commissioners this week?

The agro-chemical industry is already bombarding the Commission with lobbyists and messages. Greenpeace activists and campaigners are on the ground in Brussels, too. But with your voice, and your network of friends, we can deliver a louder, more direct message to Europe's top politicians.

We have contact details for all 27 European Commissioners, talking points you can use in your message to them, and links to further reading. The vast majority of EU citizens are opposed to GMOs, and emails direct from people who care ? in Europe, around the world ? can really work.

Please click here to take action.

Thank you for taking action before 7 May and for campaigning this far with us already.

Cohen: Bring on the right biofuels - International Herald Tribune

An attempt to put the biofuels issue into a wider perspective.

Cohen: Bring on the right biofuels - International Herald Tribune:

The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They're behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, increased rather than diminished greenhouse gases, food riots in Haiti, Indonesian deforestation and, no doubt, your mother-in-law's toothache.

Most of this, to borrow a farm image, is hogwash and bilge.

I'll grant that the fashion for biofuels led to excess, and that some farm-to-fuel-plant conversion, particularly in subsidized U.S. and European markets, makes no sense. But biofuels remain very much part of the solution. It just depends which biofuels.

Any comments? Has he missed something?