“The scale of the subsidized biofuel consumption has exploded so dramatically since the beginning of 2006, when the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 first began to impact crop-planting decisions, that there is emerging a de facto competition between people and cars for the same grains.”
F. William Engdahl
Buy Feed Corn: They’re about to stop making it
Engdahl hates biofuel and has not one good word to say about the subject. His article, “Buy Feed Corn: They’re about to stop making it”, cites arguments that loom largest against the technology such as, “grow ethanol corn instead of feed corn and the price of daily bread goes through the roof.” I agree with him once – the U.S. government’s desire to monopolise the manufacturing of it is bad news – but should biofuel be thrown out with the cartel’s bathwater?
Engdahl even blames ethanol for the abandonment of crop rotation and use of pesticides by farmers in the Midwest:
Farmers across the US Midwest, desperate for more income after years of depressed corn prices, are abandoning traditional crop rotation to grow exclusively soybeans or corn, with dramatic added impact on soil erosion and needs for added chemical pesticides. In the US some 41% of all herbicides used are already applied to corn. Monsanto and other makers of glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup are clearly smiling on the way to the bank.
Was Engdahl jostled from a Rip Van Winkle slumber to write this paragraph? I expect more from a 30-year veteran of energy and agriculture reporting than a sharp nudge in the ribs that U.S. farmers will be forced into using pesticides. A growing minority is turning but in the opposite direction, towards sustainable farming, and one reason is the high cost of herbicides.
The Spraying of America by Christopher Cook
Earth Island Journal, Spring 2005, Vol. 20, No. 1:
Roughly 85 percent of all cropland in America relies on herbicides – a business which will remain stable as long as agribusiness fights off new pesticide bans and maintains the myth that biotech is eliminating toxins in the fields.
Since the publication of Silent Spring, the amount of pesticides applied to our food has more than doubled. In 1997, according to industry figures, US growers poured more than 985 million pounds of pesticides onto their crops. The US accounts for more than one third of the $33.5 billion in global pesticide sales, the vast majority for farming. That’s an $11 billion business interest for the petrochemical and biotech industries to protect.
They’ve protected it well, perpetually – though not always successfully – fighting and delaying new regulations to limit toxins in the fields. After a modest decline in the 1980s, the amount of pesticides used each year has increased by more than 100 million pounds since 1991. At the same time, there’s been a dramatic increase in costs borne by farmers, whose spending on herbicides has more than doubled since 1980. Each year, over 100 million pounds of highly toxic active ingredients from pesticides are released into the environment in California alone.
Certainly, the stranglehold on U.S. policy makers by multinationals must be broken but new technologies emerging from the research and development of ethanol should not be sacrificed. The most obvious solution to corn shortages is to grow more. For years, U.S. dumping has forced international farmers into unemployment and populations into poverty. Now it’s being said that people will starve unless the dumping continues?
The people of corn: Maize is Mexico’s lifeblood – the country’s history and identity are entwined with it. But this centuries-old relationship is now threatened by free trade. Laura Carlsen investigates the threat and profiles a growing activist movement
New Internationalist, Dec, 2004 by Laura Carlsen
Basically, Mexico adopted a sink-or-swim policy for small farmers, opening the floodgates to tons of imported US corn. Maize imports tripled under NAFTA and producer prices fell by half. The drop in income immediately hit the most vulnerable members of rural society. While more than a third of the corn grown by small farmers is used to feed their families, the rest is sold on local markets. Without this critical cash, rural living standards plunged.
Planners predicted that three million maize farmers would leave the land. The figures seem to be around half that. Some did migrate to factory jobs along the border but a huge proportion of the displaced work as farm labourers in the US.
‘Our biggest concern is that people are abandoning their farms,’ says Jesus Leon, president of the Ita Nuni Center of Integral Rural Development, a campesino organization in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca. ‘They get so little from the sale and the family budget gets tighter and tighter. Out-migration is already high but it’s going to get worse.’
Ironically, many of those who remain have opted to do exactly the opposite of what both planners and free-trade critics predicted–they’ve planted more corn. This year Mexico will produce a record 22 million tons of corn–at record low prices.
Won’t they now enjoy better prices for that corn – unless the U.S. intercedes and makes “free trade” deals that restrict the growing and selling of it?
DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT?