This article might not seem like the type of thing I normally write about, but look deeper. However, the production of grain-based ethanol is a major factor:
Unlike previous spikes in food prices, caused by crop failures, Brown says the world is dealing with systemic changes now — rising demand in Asia, for instance, for more grain-intensive livestock. But he says the straw that broke the camel's back is the demand for biofuel.
"The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year," Brown says. "And what we are seeing now is the emergence of direct competition between the 860 million people in the world who own automobiles and who want to maintain their mobility while the 2 billion poorest people in the world simply want to survive."
Interestingly, Georgia is one of the states pioneering a much more viable alternative:
Wood waste from millions of acres of indigenous Georgia Pine will be the main source of biomass for a new cellulosic ethanol production facility in Treutlen County, Georgia. The plant, being built by Colorado-based Range Fuels, Inc., will use a two-step thermo-chemical conversion process to convert biomass into a synthetic gas and then gas to ethanol.
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The company's proprietary technology -- known as the K2 system -- eliminates the use of enzymes, which have been an expensive component of traditional cellulosic ethanol production, and transforms otherwise useless products such as wood chips, agricultural wastes, grasses, and cornstalks as well as hog manure, municipal garbage, sawdust and paper pulp into ethanol through a thermo-chemical conversion process.
Keywords: agricultural wastes, cellulose, cornstalks, ethanol, food prices, food shortages, grain, grasses, hog manure, municipal garbage, paper pulp, sawdust, wood chips