Posted on 07/15/2007 3:08:14 PM PDT by rocksblues
Rising prices for food have led the United Nations programme fighting famine in Africa and other regions to warn that it can no longer afford to feed the 90m people it has helped for each of the past five years on its budget.
The World Food Programme feeds people in countries including Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia, but reaches a fraction of the 850m people it estimates suffers from hunger. It spent about $600m buying food in 2006. So far, the WFP has not cut its reach because of high commodities prices, but now says it could be forced to do so unless donor countries provide extra funds.
Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, said in an interview with the Financial Times: “In a world where our contributions are holding fairly steady, this [cost increase] means we are able to reach far less people.”
She said policymakers were becoming more concerned about the impact of biofuel demand on food prices and how the world would continue to feed its expanding population.
The warning could re-ignite the debate on food versus fuel amid concerns biofuel production will sustain food inflation and hit the world’s poorest people.
The WFP said its purchasing costs had risen “almost 50 per cent in the last five years”. The UN organisation said the price it pays for maize had risen up to 120 per cent in the past sixth months in some countries.
Biofuel demand is soaking up grain production as is rising consumption in emerging countries for animal feed.
“We face the tightest agriculture markets in decades and, in same cases, on record,” Ms Sheeran said. Global wheat stocks have fallen to the lowest level in 25 years, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Ms Sheeran added: “We are no longer in a surplus world.”
Now there's a good idea. Maybe these 'rock stars' can use those jets to fly food to starving Jihadists in Africa, and Robert Magabbie's thugs instead of flying city to city polluting the air, telling those of us that don't fly on jets and have 10 houses, yachts, 100 cars, etc. to live in the dark.
Clean out the Swiss bank accounts of all the petty UN tyrants. There’ll be enough money to feed the world’s starving for ten years.
It is possible (since 1947) to produce ethanol directly from ethane gas and water. The process was developed by Shell Oil and has been used to produce ethanol on an industrial scale for forty years. It is called ethylene hydration and uses petrochemical feedstocks. The acid-catalyzed hydration of ethene, represented by the chemical equation
C2H4 + H2O → C2H4OH
The catalyst is most commonly phosphoric acid, adsorbed onto a porous support such as diatomaceous earth or charcoal. I expect that this process has a substansually lower production cost compared to fermentation and distillation.
Natural gas from the wellhead contains about 5 to 15% ethene and a variety of other gasses (the major constituent is methane at 70%). They are routinely stripped from the supply to leave almost pure methane to which is added an "odorant" to stink it up so people will notice leaks (methane has no smell!). The ethene is currently used mainly in the production of polyethylene. I would have more corn on the table and less polyethylene in the landfills. Yet all we hear about is production of ethanol from corn by fermentation and distillation which is fine if you are making "sipping whiskey". If you’re looking for the bad guys in this, its Archer Daniels Midland. Big agri-business is pushing this and the soybean diesel because of the huge government subsides involved. The real capper for this story is, as you say, ethanol is not a very good fuel. Any liquid petroleum has about 18,000 BTU per pound. Alcohol has about 12,000. In addition the difference in specific gravity is such that it's even worse on a volume basis. At the point of sale alcohol has about 60% of the energy content of petroleum. If that's not bad enough, alcohol is highly hydroscopic and will pull humidity out of the atmosphere to dilute itself down to 90% if it is exposed to air.
Regards,
GtG
That is one of my favorite pictures ever! It used to adorn my desktop. Now I have the quintuple quasar from hubble just to remind me how small and insignificant we humans are and what a joke algore is.
Still love that picture!
TT
I’ve never accepted any government payment not to grow food,and I’ve been farming for 36 years.I did not want the money-I thought it was just wrong.
All that money has long since been funneled into Swiss back accounts and similar hiding spots.
Yeah, the gall, leaving at gunpoint.
I’m sure Kofi and his son stole enough money to starve a million people.
That's not wuite true. Seems they are quite skilled at keeping Palestinian (no such a thing) terrorists well funded. There's a billion or so right there that could be re- directed to feeding starving Africans.
Mind you, they wouldn't be starving in the first place if the UN didn't hand over food relief to the Muhammadans that slaughtered and chased all the surviving refuges into the middle of the desert..
Thanks...I wouldn’t want there to be a world crisis without it being America’s fault. Who would we blame?
Oh of course...mine was a rhetorical point.
Only problem is, the UN has never fed a single person in its entire existence.
It has, on occasion however, stolen billions$, as in the oil for food program in Iraq.
The U.S., mainly, and other Western powers have fed the rest of the world, to the extent that we can manage it and lo and behold!
We indeed may not be able to feed the entire world!
Sorry about that. Sometimes things like that just fly right by me.
property rights
Love your tag line.
I like Rush's solution. Move.
Cheers,
tmms
Thanks
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