Lets start with the obvious: There are people starving all over the world. They are not starving because the earth cannot produce enough food to feed everyone, at least not yet. They are not starving because corn is being used to make ethanol or soy oil going into biodiesel.

They are starving because they either can’t get access to food due to political, bureaucratic, and/or economic reasons, along with just plan bad planning on the part of many well-meaning organizations. Tons of food spoil or are lost to pests while trying to get where it needs to be.

Agriculture in the developed world, along with what is termed the green revolution, has greatly increased the amount of food available to the world. Through the usage of fertilizers and pesticides and monster machines the US alone is able to create food from less land than at any time in our
history.

That type of monoculture and “green” revolution have not come without costs of their own. Although monoculture enhances the efficiency of agriculture, by its very nature it limits the diversity of crops available. Throughout the US we have seen losses of topsoil and degradation of farmland. Farmers have to add more and more inputs into their soil every year. As more topsoil is lost and more chemicals applied to the land we have seen more and more problems with water pollution across the country.

In many ways, the great traditions of Agri-Culture are being replaced with the new model of Agri-Business. So as agribusiness moves toward more and more efficient ways of mining the soil for its nutrients rather than growing food, family farms and generations of tradition are thrown out the window. Studies shows that all over the world people are leaving the rural farming communities and heading into more urban settings. In the developed world our urban areas tend to have the infrastructure in place to absorb these numbers. However, in the developing world this is not the case. Mexico City struggles daily with simply getting clean water to people. People leaving the countryside small villages and setting up shantytowns that have no water or wastewater services besiege all major cities in India.

So what do we do to change this paradigm? That is easy: Use biofuels. The more biofuels are made available and economical, the more people rush to find new and better ways of making them. We already see great promise in energy crops from grasses to fast-growing trees. These new feedstocks for biofuels become an economical boon for farmers with marginal land that is not well suited for food crops but are perfect for low-input energy crops. Biofuels production in developing nations can help jump start economic growth and access to new ways to produce food in their area thus reducing dependence on foreign sources.

Let’s recap: New biofuels feedstocks can increase economic growth, increase biodiversity in agriculture, are less dependent on outside petroleum-based chemicals, can help restore the land, and aid in restoring balance to the carbon cycle of the earth. Oh, and no one is starving because of biofuels production.

Any questions?