Registered user login:

Vote!

Is it right to use food as fuel?

  • 23% are saying yes
  • 77% are saying no

comments from readers

Carl Jones
16 April 2008
no

Daft idea to take food out of the normal food supply. We grow trees specifically to burn as fuel, we don`t go and cut down the trees in Richmond Park.

edweirdness
16 April 2008
yes

The true solution to food and fuel shortages can only come through peoples acceptance of population stabilization. Overcrowding, congestion, urban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, vanishing farm land and green space, overcrowded schools and emergency rooms, crime, pollution, lack of affordable housing, the balkanization of our communities, unconstrained immigration, the overall decline in quality of life, are all the result of "too many people competing for limited resources". Industrialized nations are doing their part by trying to limit immigration, legal as well as illegal. Government cannot address the fact that people continue to reproduce at a level that we, as a planet, cannot sustain.

swatantra nandanwar
16 April 2008
no

Its crazy, converting food into biofuel when people are starving to death. Let them eat.

Norman Chap
16 April 2008
yes

Ridiculous non-sense. Food is more expensive because oil is more expensive, same reason why biodiesel fits the bill. Even though, people starve to death because they don´t have education, jobs and money and not because corn and soy beans prices are a little higher. The world can afford producing biodiesel and food at the same time. It´s a great opportunity for the poor countries to generate more income with crops and therefore solve their poverty problems.

writeon
17 April 2008
no

Of course not! In a world where around 36,000 children die each day; day after day, stealing food out of their mouths is an abomination.

charlierichmond
17 April 2008
no

The bottom line is that it does nothing to improve global warming so the only benefit is dependency on oil imports. Surely there are other ways to move.

Cybertiger
17 April 2008
no

Of course, the biofuels agenda is primarily about genocide.

William
17 April 2008
yes

If we didn't sustain our imput we would collapse.

nawawimohamad
17 April 2008
no

Go back to basics, food is for eating and sustenance while fuel (converted from food) is wasteful and improper.

loudribs
17 April 2008
no

Clearly we need to eat, even if this means that West needs to cut back on some of its selfish induldgences.

Serosch
17 April 2008
no

If a Government stipulates that a certain percentage of fule sold muts come from renewable sources, then it must also stipulate that those renewable sources are locally produced.

Stephen Gash
17 April 2008
no

The east coast of England could be saved by utilizing wave power by constructing energy harvesting booms

Michael Powell
18 April 2008
no

It's time to realise that the game is up for consumer capitalism, give the fields back to growing food and ration resources as in the Second World War. People managed to survive then, and in many cases were a lot healthier.

Tom Melling
18 April 2008
yes

Food is fuel, so surely this is better to use than depleting coal and petroleum resources

Frank Amies
18 April 2008
no

You cannot destroy the whole ecosystem just to run a car.

Steve Brook
19 April 2008
no

Let them eat coke.

Jane Walsh
19 April 2008
no

Why aren't we harvesting the huge amounts of methane from our human and livestock wastes?!!! This gas could run motors that create electricity. Instead we dump our waste into rivers and oceans, fouling it for all.


19 April 2008
yes

If the food is going to be wasted, of course it should be converted to fuel if it's economical. The major cause of food shortages, and indeed global warming is population growth in the developing world. Our government (and the West generally) wastes vast sums of our money, which could be better used addressing the problems of our own poor, providing food and medical aid to the kleptocratic goverments of Africa and Asia without strings - we should be demanding an end to unfettered population growth as a condition for the "handouts".

Alan Briggs

David Austin
19 April 2008
no

As far as I have heard the relative 'green' benefits of using food as fuel instead of oil are very little when compared to the huge gains that could be made by redistributing food production, in order to, dare I say it, 'feed the world'.

Y?
19 April 2008
no

plenty of fuel down the pits

Tim-Jake Gluckman
20 April 2008
yes

The real point is meat eaters ruin the world's economy. All of this anti-green tra-la-.la about green fuels is just uninformed talk most of it not based on facts.
FACT no 1. A billion and a half cattle are slaughtered annually for McD____ alone. Not to mention BK, etc etc.

Fact no 2: feeding cattle requires three times as much grain -- at the very least -- as growing crops.

Meat eating is the cause of the major agricultural discussion.

The attack on Brazil by Jean Ziegler for example is just trying to flag up his profile (in the public eye's) and atmosphere.

Look at the report published by the UN this week by 400 scientists.
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/agrar_forstwi...

The fact that GM firms boycotted the final report is no surprise; their only line of argument appeared to be the so-called "Green Revolution" which had begun to fail in the late 1960s -- hence the revolutionary upsurge then -- which is matched by the widespread food riots we are currently hearing about.

Fact no 3;

there are enough potatoes to feed everybody in Bangla Desh but people there in the next 9 months will die of hunger there. Potatoes will go uneaten and rot there. Potatoes are much more efficient than rice both in terms of nutrition and grow-friendly.

Another example of the Indios’ wisdom…..

OK

Tim Jake Gluckman (Rhineland)
Timothyjake@yahoo.com

VicinSea
20 April 2008
no

In the past 10 years we have all been exposed to the vegetarian idea that it takes 8 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat. Here is a new and more disturbing idea: it takes 450 pounds of corn to make 1 gallon of ethanol. If eating meat for a day means that 7 other people go hungry that day, then using 1 gallon of ethanol means that 449 people will go hungry that day for EVERY GALLON OF FUEL USED. Use 3 gallons....1347 people go hungry....Fill up an SUV tank....near 9000 people go to bed with an empty stomach. Even if you only fill up with 10% Ethanol Blend (10EB), you directly contribute to 900 people going hungry.

george
20 April 2008
no

using food for fuel is greed by the rich who have no thought for the millions of starving human beings in the world.If it continues all mankind including the greedy rich will suffer. The greedy rich cant escape the earth in a Virgin space ships they will go down with all the rest of us

aitutaki
20 April 2008
no

Use more sustainable energy sources instead. Not only is using food for fuel starving millions but in the wheatbelt surrounding Perth http://www.perthperth.com land clearing and broad acre farming contribute to land degrigation - in particular vast areas of once good land lost to rising salt. http://www.anra.gov.au/topics/economics/images/popups/salini...

mauriceh
20 April 2008
yes

Let me start by saying that the following statement shall definitely be controversial.
It will undoubtedly cause many to state that I am a terrible person for stating this.

Some time this year the world population shall exceed 6.7 BILLION PEOPLE.
There is no way we can manage to feed this many people, and as the ever-increasing demand for food is destroying fish stocks, and our environment in general, this is going to lead to a mass die-off some time relatively soon.

Face the facts: Billions are going to starve.
That is the ONLY way we can see some move toward population reduction.
And significant population reduction is the only factor that will achieve diminished global warming, alleviation of wars, the stripping of our planets resources, and the reduction of disease and suffering.

So, here comes the controversial part:
The sooner the massive starvation and die off starts, the sooner the world has a chance to become closer to sanity.

suell
20 April 2008
yes

Linguistically as daft ques;tion, as food IS fuel! However it could be right but only as a part of a bigger and more careful strategic approach to all food production, natioanlly and globally.

Pilot22a
20 April 2008
yes

The problem isn't not enough food, or that grains are being used to make gasoline (petrol.) The problem, as it always has been, and forever will be, is too many human beings. The most pathetic scene is African children, wasted and ill, being fed from the stockpiles of First World countries. We feed them, and they breed more people to feed. The cycle is endless. The answer is to repudiate the Religionists idea that every soul needs a body, and give these poor people access to modern contraceptive methods and devices.

Contrary in Crouch End
20 April 2008
no

This will go down in history as the classic example of a knee-jerk green reaction having unintended consequences

Nigel in Manchester
21 April 2008
no

It would be fine if people were not starving all around the world. Unfortunately they are.

Quotidius
21 April 2008
yes

The 'ignorance level' in this article is astounding.
Corn has both carbohydrates and proteins. After ethanol is produced from carbohydrates the proteins (distillers grains) are used to feed cattle, hogs and poultry. In other words the production of ethanol provides BOTH fuel and food.

jan
21 April 2008
no

for years i call it 'political vegetarian' and i think it is a way to explain people the complexity of global foodproduction

alexei
21 April 2008
yes

When the oil runs out we will have to use food as fuel, as without the fuel there will shortages not just of food it self, but water and fital components for normal life we are used to. People gettig all humaine about green effects and food etc, without realising they enjoying their life bacuse of those finks. Take the pink glasses of your eyes!!!

Goldsztajn
22 April 2008
no

Agro-fuels are first and foremost a means of driving corporate profitability in agriculture, they are not the result of a concern for "green" fuels--they are part of a corporate global economy which is producing totally unsustainable urbanisation and the destruction of rural livelihoods world-wide. Workers, whether in the North or the South, suffer while food prices skyrocket and food companies and supermarkets squeeze consumers, workers and small-producers for ever greater profits.

Bryan Pepperell
23 April 2008
no

The age of human energy has begun and we face the biggest challenge the planet has knownin the last 100 years. What we must now do is take a great leap backwards. Golbalisation along with cheap energy is an aberration. We must now concentrate on equality as a new paradigm. We do this or we perish. We cannot embrace such a change without acceptance of a univerally acceptable moral code. We need absolutes in every sphere of human activity . Humanity has proven its need for moral guidance. Global law based on a fair and just society must now be our ruler. This is our biggest challange, a challenge that Plato wrestled with and we must too.
Bryan Pepperell
Wellington (NZ)

TheElitesWin
23 April 2008
no

This is the global elites attempt to de_popularise humanity for the sake of the few. Water powered inventions have been around for years, but the elites don't want that to be given a priorit, they'd much rather use the needed grains of the world for biofuels..

Subscribe

This week's New Statesman

Archive

Access 9 years
of the New Statesman

Quick Access to

Vote!

Was the lavish hospitality at the G8 an insult to the world's poor?