Perhaps many readers have become aware of the looming worldwide food shortage, there was a story on NPR’s The World just Monday night (March 31) about rising tensions in the bread lines of Egypt. London’s Guardian reported this past November that the crisis can be attributed to climate change (crop failures and ag diversion of rice and wheat crops) and fuel shortages – both the increasing price of petroleum fuels for transportation and agriculture as well as the diversion of staple food crops like soybeans and corn toward biofuels production.
Soaring grain prices are now exploding into full-fledged food riots in many corners of the planet, while Americans are stunned by rising prices every time they go to the grocery store. As of December, 2007 the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that 37 countries face immediate food crises, and 20 nations had imposed some form of food-price controls. Reuters lays additional blame on panicked speculators trading on global futures markets in the wake of recession fears fueled by the increasing defaults among Wall Street’s investment banks and stock market gamblers.
But there is hope on the horizon, particularly for those of us who were smart enough to purchase diesel powered vehicles, despite the ruinous and increasing costs of gasoline. That hope is a new source for producing biodiesel (which can run the entirety of our transportation system, including passenger cars if GM can be persuaded to come off their new diesel they’ve been sitting on in joint patent with the EPA).
Ride Lust reports that a new process to produce biodiesel from algae – thus leaving staple food crops for people who eat staple foods – may be ready to hit the market. Green Fuel Technologies has begun construction on a “Closed Water Algae” bioreactor facility that will feed from the smoke stacks of a local power plant. PetroSun has also announced that their many acres of algae ponds will be going commercial today – April 1st!
The Closed Water System technology uses energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from industrial smoke stacks to feed the algae growth, thereby ‘closing’ the carbon dioxide loop from fuel use to fuel production. This is an exciting development. Biodiesel is readily available in my locale because the nearest city requires all its mass transit and truck fleets to run on biodiesel, thus it’s available from several area stations. The problem is that it’s still more expensive than regular diesel, and goes up at the same rate as petro-diesel. That is mostly due to greed, of course, since I’m not dumb enough to believe any producers or dealers are actually pouring the excess profits into greater R&D or production. But one day soon regulators will step in, producers will recognize the gold mine doesn’t need seeding, and distributors will remember that they’ve plenty of underground tanks at truck stops that could fuel the shipping fleets. And the price will go down.
If biodiesel development can be made to go with switchgrass, algae and agricultural green-waste instead of actual food humans need to survive, basic staple food prices should go down too. Even if the financial sector goes into deep depression, you can’t have bread lines when there’s no bread. And nobody can make a market killing if nobody’s got any money to spend. So in addition to growing your Victory Garden this year to supplement your own family’s food supply, we should all be cheering these alternative biodiesel sources and technologies, helping to support production and getting in line for demand. Governments aren’t going to fix our problems. We’ll have to do it!