White House Defends Food Based Biofuels

 You know, I noticed the price of food and gas going up, and assumed that the price of food was going up because of the cost to ship it.  I mean if they have to pay more for the diesel, then at some point, they’ll have to pass the cost on to the consumer.  Right?

 Then I started reading about riots in Haiti, and that China and other governments aren’t exporting as much rice because of the increases in food costs.  But they’re also not producing as much rice.  A lot of other countries aren’t producing as much food.  It’s not on purpose, there’s a drought in Australia, Russia isn’t growing as much wheat…

So what does the the US government think is the most important thing to do?  Yea, you got it, put more effort into growing corn for ethanol. Let’s ignore for the moment all of the problems with ethanol, and look at the rest of the issues with this scenario.

 I understand their reasoning that we need to get off our oil dependence.  But, if we are going through a food shortage, is this how we need to do it? 

I know that we’re short on wheat, not corn.  However, farmers are actually planting corn because this is the crop that’s going to get the most cash.  So then we’re short on the “food” crops since the corn isn’t going to be used for food. Yet we have a food shortage.

 Our government is very short-sighted, though they can deny it all they wish.  Anyone with brains knows they are worsening the food crisis on this planet.  Yet they say that it’s more important to reduce our dependancy on oil.  What they need to do is make laws to fix the loopholes they left in the mpg requirements.  Auto makers make trucks because they’re not required to get as high a mpg on these vehicles.  That’s the whole point behind the big SUV’s too.  Our own short sightedness has brought us to this pass.  Unfortunately, this same short-sightedness is helping starve others.