The steady stream of dire reports could end, says Dennis Avery, if only the United States government scrapped its current policy on biofuels. "It's the single biggest and best thing we can do," he advises.
Avery directs the Center for Global Food Issues in Churchville, Va., a policy branch of the Hudson Institute think tank. He's on record as a strong supporter of the Coalition for Balanced Food and Fuel Policy, which was founded by the American Meat Institute, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Meat Association and other meat and livestock organizations in response to ethanol-driven increases in the cost of feedgrains and therefore of livestock and meat production. The CGFI is also a strong supporter of biotech improvements in crop yields and in nuclear energy as the best alternative to fossil fuels. (CFGI has called the claim that the world's population could be fed solely by organic agriculture "a fabrication.")
The cost of corn, which earlier this month reached the record high $6-per-bushel stratosphere, is the most visible symptom of a biofuels policy Avery calls "idiotic," but he says it's only the sign of a larger, more fundamental issue. "The demand for land is the real problem," he told MEAT&POULTRY. "The biofuel policy has put unprecedented pressure on demand for good cropland. Basically, we can't grow all this corn and grow the other food crops we need. The land can't do it. Good cropland is one of the scarcest resources on the planet."
High food prices are, right now and in the short-term, a boon for exporting U.S. food producers, including meat companies, because the low value of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies, especially the euro and Canadian dollar, make U.S. food products some of the cheapest available for the quality. But in the long term, high food costs destabilize economies and societies, and across history have been the driving cause of many changes of government, both good and terrible. Consider the overthrow of France's "let them eat cake" royalty to the emergence of the Nazi party on the heels of Germany's economic collapse following World War I, when the price of bread doubled every day and meat became impossibly expensive to all but the elitist of the elite. In South America, the regime-change continent, radical agricultural policies have destroyed native economies and cultures without benefiting the large working class.
Last week, the World Bank said that over the past three years global food prices have increased 80 percent, with at least 33 nations facing social unrest as a result. But, says Avery, "there is no reason to expect food prices to come down as long as the ethanol mandate is in effect."
Moreover, biofuels, which have been promoted as a double-benefit solution to America's energy problems -- they'd reduce the U.S.'s dependence on imported oil while reducing the global-warming carbon footprint that's created by oil-fueled industry -- won't accomplish either goal, he adds. "Every bit of biofuel we produce actually results in a carbon debt, not a benefit." And if more and more cropland is given over to corn production for biofuels, then "supplemental irrigation is something we're going to have to do," creating even more pressure on an already dwindling fresh water supply. That likely means water would have to be imported from Canada or some other source, which would require more fuel and energy.
"There is finally some rational reason for all the worry you read in the newspapers," Avery opines. "It's the worst time in human history to create a demand, by policy, for biofuels, because it comes exactly when we knew there would be food shortages."
