Friday, May 09, 2008

Bush's Comment on Food Prices

It's amazing how big a deal it is. President Bush said something that is inaccurate, insensitive, and not very diplomatic. Understandably, we Indians are outraged. The papers in India are screaming for Bush's head. I've been reading about accusations, insults, and statistics flying about in all directions, and thought I'd verify a few of them (and as usual, digress on the way).

Are BioFuels an Obvious Good?
Pick up the English edition of the National Geographic Magazine, October 2007 (cover story "Growing Fuel - The Wrong Way, The Right Way"). This is a rather thorough article which discusses what different nations are doing with biofuels. It says that ethanol plants burn natural gas or coal to create steam that drives the fractional distillation needed to produce ethanol. Based on which studies you refer to, ethanol requires nearly as much to more carbon-emitting fossil fuel than it displaces. The article also states that ethanol distilleries are competing for corn with meat producers. Of course, this competition drives up prices.

That doesn't mean that biofuels are a bad idea. It's just which biofuel you choose. For example, let's compare ethanol produced from corn in the US to ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil. I've tried to draw some charts to help understand this better.

Let's compare the total amount of fossil fuel energy required to produce ethanol.
In case of corn, it looks like this:






The Indians are Eating Up All the Food!
Indian foodgrain consumption, in spite of the growth of the burgeoning Great Indian Middle Class, has fallen by about 10 kilos per capita over the last 5 years. As it stands now, it's about a fifth or a fourth of the American per capita food consumption. Blaming rising food prices on the growth of the Indian Middle Class is a little like the American reaction to the Tata Nano - "Oh my God, there will now be a billion Indians in cars polluting our dear planet". Lest you forget, a Tata Nano is _not_ a 1-mile-per-gallon SUV (and at any rate, there will certainly not be a billion of them anytime soon).

There's another statement I read in a newspaper, that the "US should not be diverting crops for fuel when many children in India are starving". In spite of this comment coming from my camp, the second part of the statement is not entirely accurate, at least from the Indian perspective. In case you didn't know, India produces more than enough foodgrains to be _completely_ self-sufficient. The problem, of course, is distribution. Our public food distribution system is anything but complete, and _that_ is why people starve or don't get enough food. Bush isn't always correct, but to blame starvation in India on him isn't really fair.

Short version of the story : Bush has had another attack of foot-in-mouth. Why is this even news?

P.S.: Part of me thinks that Bush is trying to get the American public off his back, and media attention off the fact that several states in the US are already feeling the pinch of increase in meat prices (fodder costs more now) and foodgrain prices due to large numbers of ethanol plants coming up in the Mid-West and surrounding regions. As I've said before - he's not as stupid as most of the people who call him stupid. :-)