Food or Fuel

     Dr. Jean Zealger, the Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, point out that turning crop into bio-fuel is crime again humanity. A secret study by the World Bank concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in especially the USA and EU are directly responsible for the current explosion in grain and food prices worldwide. The World Bank secret report says that at least 75% of the recent price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture—mainly maize in North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU—in order to grow crops to be burned for vehicle fuel. "Without the increase in bio-fuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the World Bank report states. The basket of food prices rose by 140% between 2002 and February 2008. Higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%. Bio-fuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

     In 2007 to first quarter of 2008, the rice price in the international market is tripled, for example, the world price of Thai rice, 5% broken, a popular export grade, in December 2007 was $362 per ton but almost tripled to around $1,000 per ton at the end of April 2008. The main reason for the soaring of rice price is unbalanced demand and supply in rice market due to more rice has been consumed and less has been produced. And in the early years the wheat price also soared due to unbalanced consumption and production. Doubling and tripling of world food prices in the past three years have forced an added 100 million people below the poverty line. That has triggered food riots from Bangladesh to Egypt.

     Research shows that 232 kg of corn only can produce 50 liters of ethanol. Such amount of grain can feed a child in Zambia for a year! “In a world overflowing with riches, it is an outrageous scandal that more than 1 billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition and that every year over 6 million children die of starvation and related causes. We must take urgent action now.” It is time for us think more about poor in this world.

     F. W. Engdahl, World Bank Secret Report Confirms Biofuel Cause of World Food Crisis, available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9547