Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

8 Biofuels and Food Security Issues
Pages 121-136

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 121...
... BIOFUELS AND THE WORLD FOOD ECONOMY The session's first speaker was Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute and one of the world's best-known environmental analysts. He spoke on the importance of biofuels in the world food economy.
From page 122...
... The diversion of 129 million tons of grain to the production of biofuels in the United States is obviously a major factor, but there are at least two other factors involved. One is world population growth.
From page 123...
... Ten years ago, world grain consumption grew by about 21 million tons per year, while in the past few years, it has grown by 41 million tons per year. "In absolute terms," Brown said, "we are seeing much greater growth in demand." Food Supply Issues The other half of the food equation is the supply side.
From page 124...
... Once the average temperature reaches 104°F, plants go into thermal shock and photosynthesis stops. Thus, he said, as the world's average temperature edges up, it will affect grain yields adversely, unless the problem can be somehow offset through plant breeding, which researchers are now trying to do.
From page 125...
... Unless someone can figure out a process that is more efficient than photosynthesis or somehow modify photosynthesis, which is not an easy thing, we are going to have to face the reality of more and more agriculturally advanced countries hitting these glass ceilings." Maintaining Stability in the World Food Economy So, what can be done, Brown asked, to maintain stability in the world food economy? His first suggestion was to abandon the idea of producing biofuels.
From page 126...
... It is not part of our mindset." People need to start thinking about water productivity, he said, because it is water, not land, that is now the principal constraint on efforts to expand world food production. Raising water productivity will be key to increasing world food productivity, and the first step to raising water productivity will be to price water at its real value.
From page 127...
... Reflecting on comments by several previous speakers, he listed the reasons for using biofuels as concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming, a desire to reduce the environmental and health impacts of petroleumbased fuels, and concerns about national security -- particularly the fact that the United States imports almost half of its liquid fuel (mostly petroleum) , with much of it coming from volatile regions.
From page 128...
... However, RFS2 is intended to encourage cellulosic biofuels. Tax incentives have also been used to encourage biofuels production, including several that have lapsed.
From page 129...
... food is somewhatt muted by thhat fact." Still, he saidd, grocery maanufacturers and others hhave been quuite concerrned about bio ofuels becausse of the impl ications for pprices. Th he biofuels in ndustry has contested c somme of the stuudies that haave claimeed biofuels pro oduction has significantly rraised food prrices.
From page 130...
... Another environmental concern is that as the price of corn has risen, there has been increasing pressure to convert marginal farmlands and even forests into cropland. Life-cycle assessment raises the question of exactly how much greenhouse gas improvement is actually derived from using corn and soybeans to produce biofuels, and water use is yet another major environmental issue.
From page 131...
... Generally speaking, he said, moving toward the more advanced biofuels has promise. The advanced biofuels have the potential to reduce impacts on food prices, to reduce impacts on environment and health, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions far more significantly than traditional biofuels, and to offer some national security benefits by reducing the country's heavy reliance on petroleum-based fuels that come in from fairly volatile regions overseas.
From page 132...
... A common criticism of wind power is that it cannot serve as baseload generating capacity because it is not steadily available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. What happens, Brown said, is that "as wind farms grow larger, and as we move toward a national grid, then wind becomes baseload, because the wind is always blowing somewhere.
From page 133...
... "I am not sure we are going to see algae playing a major role as a source of fuel or food or feed in the future," he said. "I know ExxonMobil has been working on this for a decade now, and they still don't have anything that approaches a meaningful commercial use of the technology." Jack Spengler, Harvard School of Public Health, mentioned Brown's call for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and asked Brown if he saw any reason to believe that such an aggressive plan could be accomplished.
From page 134...
... "In this country, the epidemiological calculations show that we have 13,100 deaths each year as a result of burning coal," he said, but beyond that there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who suffer respiratory illnesses from being near a coal plant or from the pollutants released by burning coal, and the discussion of the health effects generally missed much of that. Furthermore, Brown said, the health effects of climate change could be severe, because climate change will affect food production and lead to more hunger and more malnutrition.
From page 135...
... Schnoor, University of Iowa, noted the different opinions that Brown and Olson had on biofuels, with Brown suggesting they should be eliminated altogether and Olson saying that he saw promise in advanced biofuels. In light of that, Schnoor asked Olson whether it made sense to increase advanced biofuels production to the 16 billion gallons annually called for in RFS2.
From page 136...
... 136 THE NEXUS OF BIOFUELS, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND HUMAN HEALTH USDA-NASS (U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service)


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.