Word: corns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability...
...four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and '06. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand...
Second, the U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies of subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuels. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51˘ per gal. of ethanol to divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There may be a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods--tree crops (like palm oil), grasses and wood products--but there's no case for doling out subsidies to put the world's dinner into the gas tank...
...equivalent of taking about eight average American cars off the road. That isn’t bad for one relatively small college. Moreover, soy-derived biodiesel is a byproduct of soybean processing, and its production does not decrease the food supply as greatly as that of corn or sugarcane ethanol...
...crunch? Prices for rice, wheat, corn and soybeans have soared in the last ten months as rising oil prices drove up food production costs: from the fuel to power farm machinery, to the hydrocarbon-based fertilizers, to the gasoline needed to transport food to stores. At the same time, demand for grains has grown as developed countries produce more biofuels from food-crop feedstocks, and as people in China and India take advantage of their rapid income growth and start eating more meat (which requires more grain to feed more animals). Add to that a few short-term weather shocks...