Mon, Mar 30, 2009
Michael O'NeillI don't think it's entirely a threat to food security. I think one of the benefits of, certainly of at least the bio-fuel production, has been that it's elevated prices, which has given rural farmers a little bit more income, which is a good thing. The challenge is the amount of water that it takes to actually produce that crop, and so globally, we have to think about, are we growing the right crops with that water in those areas where they can actually... where there are markets for bio-fuels, to sell those. I would hazard a guess that there is an upper limit to how much we can actually make out of soy oil or ethanol or something, and the cellulosic breakthrough has been promised for three decades and it hasn't happened, and so it's another decade away before we see that. So I do think there's a great benefit. I think the irrigation that's required to produce those kind of yields that they would like to get is the environmental challenge that we face, but I don't see a tremendous problem, and the economists would tell us that that's a good thing, that there's a market for these crops that provides income to rural farmers.