The high price of food

Benvolio · Post by **Benvolio** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:57 am

I was considering asking a question about why the price of food has risen so much lately, but I just heard some of the answers in an NPR article. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations just released a report on the subject, and while its predictions are a little pessimistic, the reasons identified seem to make sense. Some of the reasons were kind of obvious, like higher energy and transportation costs. And on a world-wide level, there have been some bad weather-related causes that have caused a temporary (~2-3 year) spike in prices. Also, demand has been increasing, and the suppliers haven't entirely responded.

I was also interested that the UN identified biofuels as a reason for the increased food costs. Apparently, 1/4 of all corn grown in the U.S. this year will go to ethanol production. This has always struck me as obvious, so I was glad to see someone say it straight. I've always thought that it doesn't make any sense to replace one scarce resource with another scarce resource, and more so if that second scarce resource requires massive amounts of fertilizers produced from the first limited resource.

If anyone wants to see the UN FAO report but doesn't want to read the full 73 pages, click on the link above and read pages 11 and 12. Those are the overview pages.

Wisteria · Post by **Wisteria** » Fri May 30, 2008 7:02 pm

Ah, ethanol production. I'm really rather peeved that so much money and corn is being sunk into developing ethanol production from such a valuable food and feed crop, especially when it's been proven that there are so many other plants that work much, much better than corn that are not one of the main staples of our diets. I suppose everyone will come to grips with that fact eventually . . .

Benvolio · Post by **Benvolio** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:25 pm

Tennessee is sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into switchgrass, which apparently has some potential as a biofuel. It's a native plant in most of North America, it's easy to maintain, it doesn't need to be planted each year, it thrives in poor soil conditions, and it doesn't need much water or fertilizer. It sounds great on paper, but no one has really made it work in real life, and it might cost more energy to process it than the end product could offer. Nonetheless, the State of Tennessee is building refineries and switching over pasture fields, so I guess we'll see.

Fredjikrang · Post by **Fredjikrang** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:22 pm

I agree about ethanol. It probably isn't worth it.

I honestly think that electric cars are the only practical future technology for the long haul. It enables complete fossil fuel independence, while not requiring it at any one time. In fact, electricity is extremely flexible, and is currently produced from at least 6 different sources, many of which are renewable/nonexpendable. The only thing holding them back is batteries, and there should be good enough batteries in the next 10-20 years to allow electric cars to replace at least 50% of all cars.

Nanti-SARRMM · Post by **Nanti-SARRMM** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 8:01 pm

Fredjikrang wrote:I agree about ethanol. It probably isn't worth it.

I experimented once with the ethanol, as Bob can attest to, my car didn't like it too well, although, I think it cleaned something out because I am getting better mileage than before I used the ethanol.

Benvolio · Post by **Benvolio** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:38 am

I recently heard about some promising test runs with vehicles using hydraulic engines. They just require a small diesel engine to pressurize the hydraulic line from time to time, so they get two or three times the gas mileage of a normal vehicle. They also are almost as cheap to make as normal cars, without a loss of horsepower or the addition of significant weight. I think they still have some technological hurdles to overcome, but they seem fairly confident that they can make it work. Hydraulic engines are used in factories all the time, so it's an existing and tested engine configuration. I'd really like to see something like this work. It might even let lazy Americans drive their big fat cars again if they want.

Wisteria · Post by **Wisteria** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:02 am

Okay, Fred, you've piqued my interest. What are the various sources electricity can come from? And are they really able to produce electricity in the quantities that we use it? I'm assuming that wind power, solar power, and water power are in there . . . but now I'm out of my element.

Fredjikrang · Post by **Fredjikrang** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:45 am

Oil, coal, natural gass, wind, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic, hydroelectric, tidal, biomass, nuclear. So, that's ten off the top of my head. I know that solar, wind and nuclear have enough potential to each completely replace fossil fuels even with current tech. I think that photovoltaic will be great if they can get the practical efficiency over 30%.

And yes, there are advantages to making electricity out of oil and coal. First of all, large power plants are much, much more efficient than cars. Second, it is much easier to remove pollution from one big plant than from a bunch of little cars.

Nanti-SARRMM · Post by **Nanti-SARRMM** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:35 pm

Fredjikrang wrote:Oil, coal, natural gass, wind, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic, hydroelectric, tidal, biomass, nuclear. So, that's ten off the top of my head. I know that solar, wind and nuclear have enough potential to each completely replace fossil fuels even with current tech. I think that photovoltaic will be great if they can get the practical efficiency over 30%.

And yes, there are advantages to making electricity out of oil and coal. First of all, large power plants are much, much more efficient than cars. Second, it is much easier to remove pollution from one big plant than from a bunch of little cars.

photovoltaic?

Also, it is a pity we haven't made any nuclear power plants since near the sixties...

Giovanni Schwartz · Post by **Giovanni Schwartz** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:23 pm

You should read "the Radioactive Boyscout". I don't remember who it's by, but it's about a kid named David Hahn, I'm tempted to say Ken something, possibly Silverstein, but I'm not sure. Along with a great biography (if poorly written), it provides lots of background about the building of nuclear powerplants and why they aren't built still. The F bomb is dropped one time, but that's the only swear word that I can remember. But be prepared: it's pretty radioactive/nuclear chemistry intense. All in all, a good book, but definitely not well written. (There were several instances where I had to go back and read a sentece again trying to understand, until I realized that it didn't make sense.)

Nanti-SARRMM · Post by **Nanti-SARRMM** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:25 pm

I some what understand because of environmental policies and the like.

Giovanni Schwartz · Post by **Giovanni Schwartz** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:30 pm

No, it's more to the effect that they're not especially effective yet. They require power to operate, that I guess they can't produce for themselves, and it's not that much less power than the power that they output.

Nanti-SARRMM · Post by **Nanti-SARRMM** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:38 pm

Giovanni Schwartz wrote:No, it's more to the effect that they're not especially effective yet. They require power to operate, that I guess they can't produce for themselves, and it's not that much less power than the power that they output.

Oh.

Giovanni Schwartz · Post by **Giovanni Schwartz** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:21 pm

Like I said, it's good reading. It gave lots of good examples, it was just presented poorly.

Fredjikrang · Post by **Fredjikrang** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:05 pm

Giovanni Schwartz wrote:No, it's more to the effect that they're not especially effective yet. They require power to operate, that I guess they can't produce for themselves, and it's not that much less power than the power that they output.

If you are saying that nuclear plants don't put out much more power than they take in, you are very much mistaken. And while it is true that there haven't been any new nuclear plants in the US in a long time, the same is not true of the world at large.

Photovoltaic is the direct conversion of light to electricity, aka solar cells.

Giovanni Schwartz · Post by **Giovanni Schwartz** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:11 pm

Fredjikrang wrote:
Giovanni Schwartz wrote:No, it's more to the effect that they're not especially effective yet. They require power to operate, that I guess they can't produce for themselves, and it's not that much less power than the power that they output.
If you are saying that nuclear plants don't put out much more power than they take in, you are very much mistaken. And while it is true that there haven't been any new nuclear plants in the US in a long time, the same is not true of the world at large.

Photovoltaic is the direct conversion of light to electricity, aka solar cells.

I should have clarified: The book I was speaking about was about breeder reactors in the U.S., not normal reactors or the world at large. A breeder reactor is supposed to put out more and more energy, and produce more and more radioactive material until it can start a new one. These are the type that take more energy than they're worth.