{"id":1635,"date":"2008-04-25T17:46:32","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T09:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2009-03-09T00:17:38","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T16:17:38","slug":"1629-of-is-biofuel-the-cause-of-a-food-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1635","title":{"rendered":"[1629] Of is biofuel the cause of the food crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Roger Cohen at the NYT insists that biofuel is not the cause of food crisis, or at least not a major one if one wants to be accurate about magnitude, since it is still a small industry. Instead, he is convinced that what is causing it is protectionism.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Much larger trends are at work. They dwarf the still tiny biofuel industry (roughly a $40 billion annual business, or the equivalent of Exxon Mobil\u2019s $40.6 billion profits in 2007). I refer to the rise of more than one-third of humanity in China and India, the disintegrating dollar and soaring oil prices.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>What sense does it make to have a surplus of environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar-based ethanol with a yield eight times higher than U.S. corn ethanol and zero impact on food prices being kept from an American market by a tariff of 54 cents on a gallon while Iowan corn ethanol gets a subsidy?<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The real scam lies in developed world protectionism and skewed subsidies, not the biofuel idea. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/24\/opinion\/24cohen.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Bring on the Right Biofuels<\/em><\/a>. Roger Cohen. NYT. April 25 2008]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Honestly, it is hard for me to say without looking at the data but I am leaning to his conclusion. Maybe, this warrants a short essay by itself.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, another go at the Doha Round, anybody?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roger Cohen at the NYT insists that biofuel is not the cause of food crisis, or at least not a major one if one wants to be accurate about magnitude, since it is still a small industry. Instead, he is convinced that what is causing it is protectionism. Much larger trends are at work. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[245,107],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-biofuel","tag-fuel-subsidies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}