---

Food vs. Fuel?

Clark Wolf, Iowa State University Director of Bioethics

Biofuels have changed Iowa agriculture.  During the Iowa Caucus we heard many presidential candidates assure Iowans of their support for the bioeconomy and for policies that would keep the price of Iowa corn high.  But some critics of biofuels have urged that such policies are a serious mistake.  It is sometimes urged that it costs more than a calorie of petroleum to produce a calorie of ethanol, that biofuels can never be a solution—or even part of a solution—to the energy crisis facing the United States and the world, and that biofuel production has harmful environmental side effects.  Some of these criticisms have been put to rest.  Apparently, new production techniques insure that more energy comes out of the process of ethanol production than is input.  While biofuels are not expected to replace conventional fuels, with development they may become part of a more comprehensive policy to address our energy problems.  While there are reasons to think that corn ethanol production has had unfortunate environmental side effects, defenders point out that the byproducts of ethanol production can be used as high-quality animal feed.  Optimists hope that alternative methods for producing and using cellulosic biomass instead of corn may be a relative environmental improvement when compared to corn agriculture and corn ethanol production. 

 Another criticism of ethanol production has received an enormous amount of press coverage -– the argument that we should not use food to produce fuel.  There are different ways to understand this argument.  According to one view, there is something special about food, since it is a human necessity.  In a world that includes hunger and malnutrition, it is argued that we should not make food into something else.  We should instead see that those who need food can get it.  As Tom Still, of the Wisconsin Technology Network reports “A top United Nations official has called the use of food crops to produce ethanol ‘a crime against humanity,’ environmentalists are blaming ethanol production for destruction of rain forests, and food riots from Haiti to Egypt are being cited as examples of what happens to prices when land is used to grow fuel instead of food.”  By increasing the price of corn, it is argued, the ethanol economy has caused or exacerbated food shortages in many poor nations around the world.

Responses to this argument have been swift.  Like food, fuel is also a human necessity.  And like food shortages, fuel shortages also have costs that can be measured in human lives and misery.  Rising global food prices reflect the economic influence of many different factors, of which corn prices are only one.  Even though ethanol production may reduce the amount of raw materials available, if ethanol could be produced efficiently enough to reduce the cost of fuel, this could result in cheaper food prices as well.  Food prices reflect transport and production costs, so they respond quite directly to the price of petroleum.  In short, rising food prices cannot simply be attributed to increasing production of corn ethanol.

Ethanol production is unlikely to reduce the price of fuel by a significant amount.  Even on the most optimistic projections, biofuels are likely to replace only a small fraction of our energy needs, so it is unlikely to have a strong direct effect on fuel prices.   Biofuels may become part of a broad and effective national energy policy, but it is unlikely that they will be the predominant component of any such policy.  At this point, it may be best to maintain attitudes of skepticism and hope as the technology for biofuel production improves.   Framing the issue in terms of “food vs. fuel” alone is too simplistic, but it carries an important grain of truth.  It focuses our attention on the predicament of people whose basic needs are influenced, and may be put at risk by, our policies.  In the end, this must be among the most important measures of success or failure of biofuel production or of any other major public policy proposal.  Perhaps it is the most important of all.

Bibliography

Still, Tom.  “Food versus Fuel and Other Biofuel Fallacies.”  Wisconsin Technology Network News, 22 April, 2008.

 Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.  “Food Versus Fuel in the United States.”  September, 2007.

 

 

---

Calendar

January 10, 2009, ISU Bioethics Program Retreat
Scheman Building, Iowa State Campus.  “Energy Alternatives for Iowa and the World,” David Pimentel, from Cornell University,  Phillip Brasher, Agricultural correspondent for the Des Moines Register, as well as other participants from Iowa State University and from the broader Iowa community.  Free for all participants, but registration is required.   Online registration:  http://www.public.iastate.edu/~ethics/

---

Bioethics in Brief