Nestle Chairman: Biofuels are "ethically indefensible"

Nestle Chairman: Biofuels are "ethically indefensible"
Wall Street Journal June 13, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121336637192571721.html

Excerpts include:
The biofuel craze, egged on by global warming activists, has helped fuel a huge agricultural crisis.

If there's one certainty, it is this: The production of biofuels has stimulated a massive, and destructive, reorientation of the world's agriculture markets. The U.S. Department of Energy calculates that every 10,000 liters of water produces as little as five liters of ethanol, or one to two liters of biodiesel. Biofuels are economical nonsense, ecologically useless and ethically indefensible.

The world's agriculture and water crisis is only going to get worse. As China and India grow, their populations are demanding more and wider varieties of food stuffs, and competition for arable land is intensifying. Food prices are rising, in large part because agriculture suppliers can barely keep up with today's demand

So what is the world doing? Reorienting land away from food production and toward plants cultivated for energy needs. This could be the single most destructive set of policy mistakes made in a generation. From time immemorial, mankind has struggled to produce enough food.

So why introduce a new competitor for this scarce resource? The blame falls squarely on global warming advocates.

Crop Production Data - Wheat

Interesting data from USDA
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/Baseline/crops.htm



I find the USDA wheat projections confusing. They indicate increased output ("Projected 2008 production, at 2,432 million bushels, is up 365 million bushels from 2007"), but the details for June 12 state:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/WHS/WHS-06-12-2008.pdf
The National Agricultural Statistics Service’s (NASS) Crop Production reported that
winter wheat heading progress as of June 1 was behind normal due primarily to below normal
temperatures throughout the spring growing season.

NASS Crop Progress reported that as of June 8, 98 percent of the spring wheat had
emerged, slightly better than the 5-year average. Sixty-three percent of the spring wheat
crop was rated good to excellent and only 4 percent reported as poor to very poor. A year
ago at this date, 81 percent of the spring wheat crop was rated good to excellent and 5
percent poor to very poor.

They also note:
In Canada a cold spring delayed planting and dryness persisted in some areas,
trimming yield prospects.
Argentina’s 2008/09
production prospects were reduced 0.5 million tons to 14.5 million tons due to dry
conditions during planting.