Nestle blames biofuels for high food prices

[thundley4]

cali (71,958 posts)

 
Nestle blames biofuels for high food prices



By James Melik Reporter, Business Daily, BBC World Service



The head of the world's largest food producer believes high prices are due to the growing of crops for biofuels.

"The time of cheap food prices is over," says Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe.

He is highly critical of the rise in the production of bio-diesel, saying this puts pressure on food supplies by using land and water that would otherwise be used to grow crops for human or animal consumption.

"If no food was used for fuel, the prices would come down again - that is very clear," he says.

"We are now in a new world with a completely different level of food prices because of the direct link with fuel," he says.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002971124

FarCenter (10,797 posts)
1. In a free economy, the market allocates resources go to their highest valued use

Such as food being allocated to propel an SUV down the interstate.

Right, but the government interferes with that and supports/forces corn to be used for fuel.  There is a virtual countrywide drought and corn isn't growing.  Prices for food is goi going to sky rocket very soon.

lumberjack_jeff (21,792 posts)
2. Ethanol is a problem, biodiesel not so much.

Biodiesel can be made from feedstocks unsuitable for food, on land unsuitable for farming.

WTF?     Unsuitable for farming means that crops don't grow there, you frelling moron.

[JohnnyReb]

WTF?     Unsuitable for farming means that crops don't grow there, you frelling moron.

I'd like for the DUmmie to post a list of those crops.

The only crop for biodiesel that I know of is soybeans.

[DumbAss Tanker]

I'd like for the DUmmie to post a list of those crops.

The only crop for biodiesel that I know of is soybeans.

Pretty much, the DUmmie is bootstrapping a variety of experiments into the use of arid-land plants into something that actually exists as a functioning production technology.  It doesn't.  Even those experiments (Had they proven economically viable) would require 'farming' to sow and harvest them, the same as any other crop.  As it turns out, those experimental crops will produce fuel economically when we are about as hard up for it as Germany was in late March of 1945, and not before.

[jukin]

If you hate the problems that government creates, just wait until you see their solutions!