GOODBYE CHEAP FOOD, HELLO SMOG

Biofuel Mania Ends Days Of Cheap Food By Gwynne Dyer

07/16/07 "NZHerald" --The era of cheap food is over. The price of maize has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 per cent in one year, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour - used in making the staple food of the poor, tortillas - went up fourfold.

Before World War II, most families in developed countries spent a third or more of their income on food, as the poor majority in developing countries still do. But after the war, a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the green revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long, steep fall in the real price of food.

For the global middle class, it was the good old days, with food taking only a tenth of their income.

It will probably be back up to a quarter within a decade. And it may go much higher than that because we are entering a period when three separate factors are converging to drive food prices up.

A sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction.

The attraction of biofuels for politicians is obvious: they can claim that they are doing something useful to combat emissions and global warming - although the claims are deeply suspect - without demanding any sacrifices from business or the voters.

The amount of United States farmland devoted to biofuels grew by 48 per cent in the past year alone, and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace the lost food production.

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