UN Sec-Gen calls on world leaders to attend Food vs Fuel summit; new UN Food head calls biofuels a “scandal”, as USDA projects 2008 corn prices lower than futures market
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that a UN task force on the food crisis will prepare recommendations for the June 3-5 High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, which Secretary Ban said world leaders should attend.
The UN’s top food adviser, human rights campaigner and academic Olivier de Schutter, said the World Bank and IMF had “gravely underestimated the need to invest in agriculture,” and said that “The ambitious goals for biofuel production set by the United States and the European Union are irresponsible,” calling biofuels investment a “scandal that only serves the interests of a tiny lobby.”
The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a review of land-use conversion by biofuel producers, in response to the global increase in food prices. Ban, who placed climate change at the top of the UN agenda, is responding to internal pressure from UN food agencies facing a crisis over rising prices.
The Guardian has reported that some senior UN officials are attacking the Secretary-General for being “out of touch” and not knowing “what is really going on in our agencies”. Ban said “This steeply rising food price is a new phenomenon,” he said. “We have only seven years left to meet the target of 2015,” referring to the Millenium Development Goal of halving global hunger by 2015, adding “This is very serious.”
Meanwhile, the USDA released its May harvest outlook, and projects that wheat production will climb 16 percent, corn will decline 7 percent, and soybeans will increase 20 percent. Prices are projected at $5.00-$6.00 for corn, down from the $6.14 July futures contract on the CBOT; $6.60-$8.10 per bushel compared to $8.05 for the July CBOT contract,; soybean oil is projected at $0.50-$0.54 per pound, compared to $0.6128 for the July CBOT contract. Export demand for corn, wheat and soybeans are expected to drop based on high production and lower imports in the EU-27 countries.
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simplicator | May 14, 2008 | Reply
Ban Ki-moon is Bank-ing big money from Big Oil. Biofuels and food prices are only remotely connected. There is a much more direct link between the cost of petroleum and the cost of food. We transport all food using petroleum in trucks, trains, ships and planes. Farmers use petroleum in their tractors and other farm machinery and most fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are petroleum-based. Even the plastic to wrap our food comes from petroleum. The world’s economy is based on petroleum, so in a year when petroleum increases by more than 50%, food prices also rise by over 50%. Hummm… gee maybe there’s a connection!
I wish the biofuels industry was big enough to affect anything, but right now it is not. Biofuels still take a far back seat to petroleum, weather destroying crops and increased demand for meat. Ethanol used about 12% of the USA corn supply, while almost all of the rest went to feed livestock, not people. Producing meat takes about ten times as much land and resources to than vegetables, fruits and grains for direct consumption. We’ve exported our bad habit of eating meat to China and India and prices are increasing accordingly. If we all cut back on Big Macs food prices would fall.
Biodiesel is mostly made from soy oil in the USA. The oil is about 10% of the bean and is removed in preparing the soy meal for livestock consumption. The oil has no nutritional value and is not even classified as food. Not too long ago soy oil was thrown into land fills as an unwanted byproduct. As we increase the amount of soy oil we use, we increase the amount of meal produced and this increased supply should reduce soy meal prices, not increase them.
None of what I’ve said is a big secret, it’s pretty basic economics. We do not ship our corn and soybeans to the 3rd world, therefore it has little or no bearing on their hunger issue. If the UN and other “experts” really want to resolve world hunger, they wouldn’t fixate on unrelated issues. Not one of these guys has mentioned the increased price of petroleum and its affect on food prices. My simple math leads me to believe that these people are either being paid off or they are drastically under-qualified for the lofty positions they currently hold. Either way, it’s time for a change.