CSB #6: Biofuel Causes Raises in Food Prices and Hunger Fears

The cassava root is an important ingredient for making everything like tapioca pudding, ice cream, paper, and animal feed. However, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the largest cassava exporter in the world, went to China to make biofuel. With the increase in demand for cassava chips by China, Thailand has exported nearly four times as much and doubled the price of cassava. As developing countries are now passing laws to increase the use of non-fossil fuels and countries like China are trying to find new ways to power their industries and cars, many crops like cassava and corn are being used for biofuels. Furthermore, with many countries in need of biofuel crops and not a large harvest in crop producing countries, experts believe that it may cause high prices and hunger. Other than possible starvation and high expenses, there could also be political instability in that country. In many poor places like Algeria, Egypt, and Bangladesh, soaring food prices have caused riots or political turmoil because palm oil, used as a biofuel, is a major food item for the people there. Many reasons for bad crops are because of bad weather and high oil prices that make transportation expensive. For example, severe weather destroyed crops in Russia, Australia, and China, and the mealy bug reduced Thailand's cassava harvest. Many food experts suggest that countries should change their policies so fuel mandates can be used when food stocks become low or prices become too high. In addition, rises in oil prices also contributed to increases in demand for biofuels. Shortages occur because farmers who used to plant crops for food start planting different crops for biofuels, resulting in less farmers planting food crops. Although crops like corn are a main part of the diet in Africa, cassava is not central to Asian diets, even though it provided backup nutrition in small harvest years. This means that making fuel from cassava in China will not directly affect food prices or create food shortages in their own country. The problem of biofuel is that the high demand for these crops like corn and cassava are causing food shortages in countries and increased food prices.

This article was very interesting to me because the shortages of food and increased food prices could lead to a world problem like possible starvation in some African countries. Also, food shortages are known to cause political instability, which could have been one of the reasons for people to overthrow their leader. One example of this occurred recently in countries like Egypt, where the people demonstrated on the streets and successfully kicked their leader out of office. After reading this article, I became aware that although biofuel is one of the most likely alternative energy resources that is going to replace fossil fuels, there is a problem because it causes increases in food price and shortages in food. I hope that fuel mandates are made so countries that supply biofuel crops can use them when food stocks become too low or prices become too high.

Resources:

• Article:
• Rosenthal, Elisabeth. “Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears .” The New York Times. The New York Times , 6 Apr. 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. - <http://www.nytimes.com/‌2011/‌04/‌07/‌science/‌earth/‌07cassava.html?ref=earth>.