2012 blev et tørt år i USA, og manglen på vand har ødelagt store dele af majshøsten. Den amerikanske bio-ethanolindustri opkøbte 40 procent af produktionen. Resultatet er fødevarestigninger på op til 21 procent, skriver Timothy A. Wise fra Global Development and Environment Institute, onsdag på Al Jazeera.
Record drought in the US farm belt this summer withered corn fields and parched hopes for a record US corn harvest, but US farmers may not be the ones most severely affected by the disaster. Most have insurance against crop failure. Not so the world’s import-dependent developing countries, nor their poorest consumers. They are hurting.
This is the third food price spike in the last five years, and this time the finger is being pointed squarely at biofuels. More specifically, the loss of a quarter or more of the projected US corn harvest has prompted urgent calls for reform in that country’s corn ethanol programme.
… US livestock producers aren’t the only ones affected by shortages and high prices. The most devastating impact is on the poor in developing countries, who often use more than half their incomes to buy food. It also hurts low-income developing countries dependent on corn imports.
As I showed in my recent study, “The Costs to Developing Countries of US Ethanol Expansion”, the US ethanol programme pushed up corn prices by up to 21 per cent as it expanded to consume 40 per cent of the US harvest.
This price premium was passed on to corn importers, adding an estimated $11.6bn to the import bills of the world’s corn-importing countries since 2005. More than half of that – $6.6bn – was paid by developing countries between 2005 and 2010. The highest cost was borne by the biggest corn importers. Mexico paid $1.1bnmore for its corn, Egypt $727m.
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Biofuel impacts on food prices
The debate over biofuels has grown urgent since food prices first spiked in 2007-2008, ushering in a food crisis characterised by repeated jumps in global food prices. Prices for most staple foods doubled, fell when the bubble burst in 2009, then jumped again to their previous high levels in 2010-2011.
After a brief respite in the first half of this year, the US drought triggered a new wave of price spikes, the third in just five years. Corn prices were particularly hard-hit, reaching record levels of more than $8.00/bushel, and more than $300 per metric tonne. Before the first spikes, prices had languished around $100/metric tonne.
Experts have debated how much of the price increases should be blamed on global biofuels expansion. Few argue now that the contribution is small. A US National Academy of Sciences review attributed 20-40 per cent of the 2007-2008 price spikes to global biofuels expansion. Subsequent studies have confirmed this range for the later price increases.
Why is the impact so large? Because so much food and feed is now diverted to produce fuel, and so much land is now used for biofuels feedstocks – corn and sugar for ethanol, soybeans, palm oil and a variety of other plants for biodiesel. This rapidly growing market was fuelled by a wide range of government incentives and mandates and by the rising price of petroleum.
Impact on developing countries
Over the last 50 years, and particularly since the 1980s, the world’s least developed countries have gone from being small net exporters of agricultural goods to huge net importers. The shift came when structural reforms in the 1980s forced indebted developing country governments to open their economies to agricultural imports while reducing their support for domestic farmers. The result: a flood of cheap and often-subsidised imports from rich countries, forcing local farmers out of business and off the land.
In the price spike of 2008, the world’s least developed countries imported $26.6bn in agricultural goods and exported only $9.1bn, leaving an agricultural trade deficit for these overwhelmingly agricultural countries of $17.5bn, more than three times the deficit recorded in 2000 ($4.9bn). This squeezes government budgets, strains limited foreign exchange reserves and leaves the poor more exposed to food price increases.
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Stop fuelling the food crisis
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On World Food Day, October 16, the FAO will convene an emergency meeting on the food crisis in Rome. Disgracefully, the G-20 group of economically powerful nations declined to convene its own emergency meeting, with a US spokesperson saying that “agricultural commodity markets are functioning”.
Global leaders should take a strong stand in Rome against biofuels expansion, endorse the use of food reserves to cushion markets in times of drought, demand rules to end financial speculation on food commodities and restrict the land grabs that are driven largely by global demand for biofuels.
It’s time we put food before fuel and people before cars.
