Ethanol Subsidies: An Engineered Food Monopoly 

Part IV

 

As riots for freedom spread across Middle East oil dictatorships, the issue of food shortage is for the first time world news.  But the cause of the shortage is never heard in the big US media.

Bloomberg\’s News feature story on world famine "World Feeding Itself Spurs Search Amid Global Feast and Famine" speaks of famine but omits the one cause that will not naturally right itself – ethanol subsidies that result in the destruction of billions of bushels of feed grains every year.  It is a cause that can not be discussed without losing friends in the very powerful agricultural business lobby.  This is no doubt why you do not hear about it from the media or your Congressman.

Bloomberg and all of the mainstream media erroneously blame the impending famine on natural causes, like crop failures and floods.  Until Americans recognize that this is a manmade famine with many beneficiaries and billions of victims, there will be no solution. 

Here are a few correct statements from the Bloomberg story:

…"The riots that ensued — propelled in part by anger over high food prices — drove Ben Ali from power and spread to Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria."

…"Overall, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome says global food prices surged in January."

…“There is not one crop you can point to that is without supply problems.” 

 …"rising global food prices have pushed 44 million more people into extreme poverty in developing countries since June, according to the World Bank.

"… the UN estimates that the poorest countries paid as much as 20 percent more for food in 2010 than in 2009.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg also supports widely held myths I disagree with: 

…"The hunger that has roiled the Middle East was not caused by the whims of autocrats and cops. –WRONG!

…"It began last year with crippling drought in Russia and later Argentina, and torrential rains in Australia and Canada." -WRONG AGAIN.  Bloomberg does not mention that the 10 year old ethanol industry that consumes and wastes 15 billion bushels of corn each year, removes this low cost grain from the food chain and tilting the supply curb to force grain and meat prices higher.  


Ethanol is the active ingredient in all booze. The USA ethanol industry makes enough grain alcohol to keep the entire world\’s population dead drunk around the clock for two months of every year … enough to kill all the worlds\’ children if fed to them. And the ethanol lobby says it plans to double and triple its production. The corn destroyed would feed millions.

This is the 4th part in this series.  We hope you will read all of them on our website and share them with your local media.  The next News issue will feature the words of a  competent Chemical Engineer’s scientific explanation of why ethanol is not and never can be a replacement for petrol.

 

A lecture to Christ Follower\’s Podcast, February 22, 2011

By Charles E. Carlson