Feed people, not cars

Higher food prices are the result of droughts, higher fuel costs to truck the food to market and competition between industries. Seventy percent of all the grain raised in the U.S. is used to feed animals on those Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), and the demand for meat is increasing. The ethanol industry is now competing with those CAFOs for the same grain, and the result is higher prices. There are an estimated 6.6 billion people in the world today, and according to the World Health Organization, 60 percent of them are malnourished. The earth’s population is expected to reach 8.3 billion by 2030. In order to feed everybody, we need to rearrange our priorities and change our life style. It takes more than 10 pounds of grain to raise one pound of beef, and you can feed a whole lot more people with all that grain than you can with one pound of meat. For ethanol production, it will take about 11 acres to grow enough grain to fuel one car for a year. Those same 11 acres can feed at least seven people for that year. Meanwhile, according to the EPA, both CAFOs and cars are a leading cause of global warming which is causing the droughts. We simply can’t continue this cycle of supplying CAFOs and cars, which are causing global warming, which is causing the droughts, all of which are causing food prices to go up. There’s simply not enough land to feed all the people plus supply the CAFOs and fuel our cars. Our number one priority should be grain for people, not CAFOs or cars. CAFOs should be phased out and the auto industry needs to develop hydrogen fuel-cell cars as fast as they can. Only then can we bring the spiraling food prices under control.