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.”
Donate
Become A Member

EJ Communities Map

Map of Coal and Gas Facilities

We are mapping all of the existing, proposed, closed and defeated dirty energy and waste facilities in the US. We are building a network of community groups to fight the facilities and the corporations behind them.

Our Network

ActionPA
EJnet
Corporations
Justice Map
Spatial Justice Test

Watch Us on YouTube