Green Options » food costs

Food Riots a Potential Outcome of Underfunded Agricultural Research

Kay Sexton — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:58:37 +0000

Professor Douglas Kell is the Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK and he says that without an additional £100m a year being spent on crop research in Britain, there could be food riots in developing countries as the growing world population fails to find enough affordable food.

Investigating improvements in crop yields is one way that the developed world could help to secure food supplies for the planet as a whole. And, he claims, the UK would see economic benefits from this research investment.

To put the research cost into proportion, Kell says that the £100 million that BBSRC seeks would increase its budget by nearly 50% but is still only around the same as one day’s expenditure on the disastrous Foot and Mouth epidemic in the UK in 2001. This is a timely warning for a world teetering on the edge of panic related to the swine flu or (as US farmers would prefer) H1N1 virus which may soon be declared a pandemic.

Food or Fuel? Both - with the Help of Saltwater Crops and Algae

Megan Prusynski — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:00:13 +0000

The ocean is a powerful force that covers most of our planet. But until recently, the rugged coastline hasn’t really been considered a source of farmable land due to salinity. Saltwater crops are being more carefully by scientists as a possible source of bio-fuels, an article in Science shows that developing saltwater crops in coastal and salty areas could help open up vast new areas of land previously thought unusable.

WiredScience reports on new findings that show the biomass producing potential of salt-loving plants for use in alternative fuels:

The Problem with Biofuels

Carol Gulyas — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:27:08 +0000

We should have known that any product endorsed by the U.S. auto industry and the agribusiness lobby couldn’t really be sustainable. Agribusiness loves ethanol biofuels because they can get higher prices for corporate corn; the auto industry loves ethanol because it doesn’t have to retool their gas-guzzling cars. In October, the United Nations called for a moratorium on the use of biofuels, because they are exploiting land used to produce food and causing food prices to rise.

“It’s a crime against humanity to convert agriculturally productive soil into soil which is producing food stuff which will be burned into biofuel.”–Jean Ziegler, United Nations

In Brazil, carbon-neutralizing rainforest is being replaced with soybean fields to produce soy-based ethanol. Zaproot’s Jessica shares the quick and easy scoop on the problem with biofuels in her “Biofuels Suck” video.

Biofuels produced from residual waste products do show promise, however, and some cry that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water by discounting biofuels entirely. What is clear is that, if reducing carbon emissions is our goal, the biofuels strategy needs to be examined carefully.