- The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society
- List of Contributors
- How is Food Political? Market, State, and Knowledge
- Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies
- Genetically Improved Crops
- Agroecological Intensification of Smallholder Farming
- The Hardest Case: What Blocks Improvements in Agriculture in Africa?
- The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology
- Biofuels: Competition for Cropland, Water, and Energy Resources
- Alternative Paths to Food Security
- Ethics of Food Production and Consumption
- Food, Justice, and Land
- Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality
- Delivering Food Subsidy: The State and the Market
- Diets, Nutrition, and Poverty: Lessons from India
- Food Price and Trade Policy Biases: Inefficient, Inequitable, Yet not Inevitable
- Intellectual Property Rights and the Politics of Food
- Is Food the Answer to Malnutrition?
- Fighting Mother Nature with Biotechnology
- Climate Change and Agriculture: Countering Doomsday Scenarios
- Wild Foods
- Livestock in the Food Debate
- The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement
- Food Values Beyond Nutrition
- Cultural Politics of Food Safety: Genetically Modified Food in France, Japan, and the United States
- Food Safety
- The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification
- The Politics of Grocery Shopping: Eating, Voting, and (Possibly) Transforming the Food System
- The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture
- Co-Existence in the Fields? GM, Organic, and Conventional Food Crops
- Global Movements for Food Justice
- The Rise of the Organic Foods Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon
- The Dialectic of Pro-Poor Papaya
- Thinking the African Food Crisis: The Sahel Forty Years On
- Transformation of the Agrifood Industry in Developing Countries
- The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush
- Agricultural Futures: The Politics of Knowledge
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
A rapidly growing world population and an even more rapidly growing consumption of fossil fuels are increasing demand for both food and biofuels, which will exaggerate both the food and fuel shortages around the world. Producing biofuels requires huge amounts of both fossil energy and food resources, which will intensify conflicts over these resources. Using food crops to produce ethanol raises major nutritional and ethical concerns. More than 66% of the world human population is currently malnourished, so the need for grains and other basic foods is critical. Growing crops for fuel squanders land, water, and energy resources vital for the production of food for people. Using food and feed crops for ethanol production has brought increases in the prices of US beef, chicken, pork, eggs, breads, cereals, and milk of 10% to 20%. In addition, Jacques Diouf, Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that using food grains to produce biofuels is already causing food shortages for the poor of the world. Growing crops for biofuel ignores the need to reduce natural resource consumption and exacerbates the problem of malnourishment worldwide by turning food grain into biofuel.
Keywords: biofuels, land, water, resources, subsidies, hunger
David Pimentel, Professor Emeritus, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University
Michael Burgess, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University
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- The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society
- List of Contributors
- How is Food Political? Market, State, and Knowledge
- Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies
- Genetically Improved Crops
- Agroecological Intensification of Smallholder Farming
- The Hardest Case: What Blocks Improvements in Agriculture in Africa?
- The Poor, Malnutrition, Biofortification, and Biotechnology
- Biofuels: Competition for Cropland, Water, and Energy Resources
- Alternative Paths to Food Security
- Ethics of Food Production and Consumption
- Food, Justice, and Land
- Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality
- Delivering Food Subsidy: The State and the Market
- Diets, Nutrition, and Poverty: Lessons from India
- Food Price and Trade Policy Biases: Inefficient, Inequitable, Yet not Inevitable
- Intellectual Property Rights and the Politics of Food
- Is Food the Answer to Malnutrition?
- Fighting Mother Nature with Biotechnology
- Climate Change and Agriculture: Countering Doomsday Scenarios
- Wild Foods
- Livestock in the Food Debate
- The Social Vision of the Alternative Food Movement
- Food Values Beyond Nutrition
- Cultural Politics of Food Safety: Genetically Modified Food in France, Japan, and the United States
- Food Safety
- The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification
- The Politics of Grocery Shopping: Eating, Voting, and (Possibly) Transforming the Food System
- The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture
- Co-Existence in the Fields? GM, Organic, and Conventional Food Crops
- Global Movements for Food Justice
- The Rise of the Organic Foods Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon
- The Dialectic of Pro-Poor Papaya
- Thinking the African Food Crisis: The Sahel Forty Years On
- Transformation of the Agrifood Industry in Developing Countries
- The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush
- Agricultural Futures: The Politics of Knowledge
- Index
