So even Greenpeace has gone against bio fuels
I suppose the biggest companies in the World will have the best PR departments as well. What a cunning spin they put on it, perhaps the ultimate argument. Well it would be the ultimate argument if it were true.
Their argument is that putting aside crops to grow fuel instead of fuel hurts the World’s most vunerable people because food prices increase and they cant afford to feed themsleves. The biggest load of nonsense Ive heard in my life and I cant believe that even so called environmental groups have fallen for it.
Im going to deal with the faults with this argument one by one.
First of all the only reason that it pays to grow fuel crops instead of food crops is because oil is so expensive. Now fuel is the most crucial part of developing economies so if you want to keep or push a country back into poverty high oil prices is the thing that is going to do it. Poor countries spend by far a greater percentage of their wealth on fuel. For example there are case of poeple in Vietnam who are being forced to revert to farming with animals because the price of the fuel is too high to run their tractors. Talk about a backward step, talk about a reduction in productivity. Now Im not saying that this is the fault of the oil companies but lets support these countries in growing their own fuel instead of saying bio fuels is bad which is what is being said at the moment, its not going to happen overnight but lets give them time to develop their systems. Think about it with machines one man can work 1 acre a day for example by hand, but with a tractor he can work 100 acres, now I here you say what going to happen to the people who used to work the land, 1 man is doing the work of a hundred. They will do what every other country does and they move to the cities. Now tell me something else, which food do you think is going to be cheaper, the food produced by a 100 people of the food produced by 1 person with a tractor. Its not rocket science. Fuel prices are the primary problem not food prices
Now people are also saying people cant afford to eat. Who cant afford to eat? It must be the people in the cities because farmers are self sufficient. Why havent the people in the cities got the cash to buy food? because their economy doesnt produce enough cash. If high oil prices and growing bio fuels isnt a ticket to a giving a country a BOOMING export industry, I dont know what is.
Bio fuels are going to increase the price of food. This is only true if we dont develop new farmland. Now as Ive mentioned before, there are millions of acres of uncultivated land in Africa. So all we have to do is to expand argricultural land. But then the argument is what about the carbon emissions from transporting all this food thousands of miles. Simple, the fuel used will be from bio fuels.
Food is like any other comoditity, oil, corn, gold whatever. As demand and prices go up, its becomes profitable to develop new agricultural land, just like it is to develop oil fields in hard to reach places. America looks like its going to pass laws to develop off shore oil drilling around the coast of America. They could do that or they could grow the fuel. The fact of the matter with the USA is that they have a finitie amount of land and its all used for something. They really are in a bit of a pickle becuase you know the farmers want to make as much money as possible and not just America but all developed countries. Germany, UK, France, USA, Japan all the countries are close to being maxed out with regards to the growing capacity fo their land. Food, OK there is enough land to be close to self sufficent, but can you imagine the problem when the farmers have the oppurtuinity to produce fuel as well. Food competing with fuel. Bio fuels are really not an option, at least for the West. Really, its the last thing that governments want. The US govenrment really is panicking, they have opened a Pandoras box and they know it. As if the high price of oil wasnt a big enough problem there are also the environmental pressures.
The only obvious solution at the momentis bio fuels, it kills two birds with 1 stone. Carbon Neutral and it WILL be cheap to produce if sufficient money is invested. The problem? The West arent in a position to solve the problem themselves. Its comes back to what I was saying, the West doesnt have enough land, nowhere near enough. The West needs access to millions of acres of uncultivated land.
