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Industrial Agriculture & Food Vs. Fuel

  • “Next Gen­er­a­tion Bio­fu­els”: Burst­ing the New “Green” Bub­ble Jan­u­ary 15, 2009.
    This let­ter chal­lenges unre­al­is­tic promis­es from an unsus­tain­able indus­try. The groups orig­i­nat­ing the let­ter include Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project, Rain­for­est Action Net­work, Food First, Fam­i­ly Farm Defend­ers, Grass­roots Inter­na­tion­al, ETC Group, Insti­tute for Social Ecol­o­gy, Heart­wood, Dog­wood Alliance, Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, and Native For­est Coun­cil    .
  • The World Accord­ing to Mon­san­to.
    Here is a trail­er for the excel­lent doc­u­men­tary.
  • Archer Daniels Mid­land: The Exxon of corn? by Tom Philpott, 02 Feb 2006
  • Corn and Fer­til­iz­er Use USDA. See tables 9–14.
  • How Can We Out­live Our Way of Life? by Dr. Tad Patzek, 10 Sep­tem­ber 2007.
    Paper pre­pared for the 20th Round Table on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment of Bio­fu­els, OECD. “In this paper I out­line the ratio­nal, sci­ence-based argu­ments that ques­tion cur­rent wis­dom of replac­ing fos­sil plant fuels (coal, oil and nat­ur­al gas) with fresh plant agro­fu­els. This 1:1 replace­ment is absolute­ly impossible…As I show in this paper, the solar pow­er cap­tured by indus­tri­al corn, tree, and sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tions is minus­cule when com­pared with our cur­rent use of oil or the poten­tial pro­vid­ed by pho­to­volta­ic solar cells. To make things worse, what lit­tle solar ener­gy is cap­tured by the plants goes in tan­dem with a dis­pro­por­tion­ate envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and neg­a­tive free ener­gy bal­ance of agrosys­tems. The pho­to­volta­ic cell-bat­tery-elec­tric motor sys­tem is some 100 times more effi­cient than major agro­fu­el systems.”
  • What About the Land? By Julia Olm­stead, 05 Dec 2006
    A look at the impacts of bio­fu­els pro­duc­tion, in the U.S. and the world.
  • The Bil­lion Ton Vision U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy, April 2005
    Bio­mass as Feed­stock for a Bioen­er­gy and Bio­prod­ucts Indus­try: the Tech­ni­cal Fea­si­bil­i­ty of a Bil­lion-Ton Annu­al Sup­ply…The DOE boasts about the poten­tial for ALL U.S. for­est and agri­cul­tur­al land to dis­place 1/3 of cur­rent nation­al petro­le­um consumption.
  • Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Pho­to Flash­back Sep­tem­ber, 2008.
    This pic­ture of a man mea­sur­ing the for­mer ground lev­el in rur­al New Mex­i­co, in 1957, great­ly illus­trates some of the fol­lies being revist­ed with cur­rent Bio­fu­el, Biochar, and Indus­tri­al Agri­cul­ture prac­tices. “Only the deep roots of native bluestem grass held this hill of sandy soil togeth­er; winds had carved the rest away. Back then farm­ers here used clean tillage, the prac­tice of clear­ing the soil sur­face of plant debris.” 
  • Stuck in the Mid­dle with Fuel By Eliza Bar­clay, 14 Dec 2006
    As its neigh­bors back bio­fu­els, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca gears up for busi­ness
    Coun­tries pre­pare to devel­op avail­able farm­land for ethanol and biodiesel…since “there is no lim­it on [avail­able farm­land] in Cen­tral America.”
  • The True Cost of Agro­fu­els: Impacts on Food, Forests, Peo­ple and Cli­mate 2007.
    This report is one of the most com­plete analy­sis of the mul­ti­ple aspects of Agro­fu­els cov­er­ing issues of soil, cor­po­rate con­trol and con­sol­i­da­tion, water, plan­ta­tions and pulp mills, fer­til­iz­er usage, Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing, trans­porta­tion, and cli­mate change. The con­clu­sion flesh­es out path­ways and solu­tions to meet­ing the chal­lenges for which agro­fu­els are a false solution.
  • Mon­san­to vs. U.S. Farm­ers Report Novem­ber, 2007.
    Pub­lished by the Cen­ter for Food Safe­ty. The report doc­u­ments Mon­san­to’s law­suits against Amer­i­can farm­ers, reveal­ing thou­sands of inves­ti­ga­tions, near­ly 100 law­suits and numer­ous bank­rupt­cies. Also pro­vid­ed is a toll-free hot­line estab­lished for farm­ers fac­ing law­suits or threats from Mon­san­to to get guid­ance and refer­rals.Food Vs. Fuel
  • Mas­sive Diver­sion of U.S. Grain to Fuel Cars is Rais­ing World Food Prices
    By Lester Brown, 21 March, 2007

    “In the past, food price ris­es have usu­al­ly been weath­er relat­ed and always tem­po­rary. This sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. As more and more fuel ethanol dis­til­leries are built, world grain prices are start­ing to move up toward their oil-equiv­a­lent val­ue in what appears to be the begin­ning of a long-term rise.”“Since the Unit­ed States is the lead­ing exporter of grain, ship­ping more than Cana­da, Aus­tralia, and Argenti­na com­bined, what hap­pens to the U.S. grain crop affects the entire world. With the mas­sive diver­sion of grain to pro­duce fuel for cars, exports will drop. The world’s bread­bas­ket is fast becom­ing the U.S. fuel tank.”

  • Full Tanks at the Cost of Emp­ty Stom­achs
    A state­ment by the Brazil­ian Land­less Work­ers Move­ment (MST), Feb­ru­ary 28, 2007. “Bio­mass is false­ly pre­sent­ed as the new ener­gy matrix, the ide­al of which is renew­able ener­gy. We know that bio­mass will not actu­al­ly be able to sub­sti­tute fos­sil fuels, nor is it renew­able.”
    “Our prin­ci­pal objec­tive is to guar­an­tee food sov­er­eign­ty, as the expan­sion of the pro­duc­tion of bio­fu­els aggra­vates hunger in the world. We can­not main­tain our tanks full while stom­achs go emp­ty.”
  • Feed­ing the Beast: It’s time for a real “food vs. fuel” debate
    By Tom Philpott, 13 Dec 2006
    “109 ethanol refiner­ies cur­rent­ly churn out 5.3 bil­lion gal­lons of ethanol a year — and an addi­tion­al 56 plants (plus expan­sions at sev­en exist­ing ones) have bro­ken ground. When these new plants are on line, the indus­try’s capac­i­ty will near­ly dou­ble, to 9.7 bil­lion gal­lons a year.”
  • Ethanol could leave the world hun­gry By Lester Brown, August 16 2006
    “One tank­ful of the lat­est craze in alter­na­tive ener­gy could feed one per­son for a year.”
  • The Myth of Brazil’s Ethanol Suc­cessThe Ener­gy Tri­bune Sep. 13, 2006
    “Brazil is a devel­op­ing coun­try whose con­sump­tion of crude oil is actu­al­ly minus­cule, 10 times less than the U.S. Inter­est­ing­ly, for the last 40 years, the ener­gy con­sumed in Brazil as crude oil has been less than the total calorif­ic
    val­ue of corn grown in the U.S.!”
  • How Food and Fuel Com­pete for Land By Lester Brown, Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 01 2006



    “On any giv­en day, there are now two groups of buy­ers in world com­mod­i­ty mar­kets: one rep­re­sent­ing food proces­sors and anoth­er rep­re­sent­ing bio­fu­el producers.”

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