Climate Food and Agriculture

Alcohol refinery may enhance tourist industry

Tourists, bird watchers, and native cattle herders in Kenya's Tana River delta may soon have a spanking-new alcohol refinery in the middle of their wetland. Granted, the wetland will be slightly less wet because a third of its water will be diverted to cropland. Always one to look for a silver lining, I would hope that this refinery will include an air-conditioned bar where tourists and herders alike can gather for happy hour after a long, hot day of wildlife viewing and cattle herding.

Paul Matiku, Executive Director of Nature Kenya (and might I add, a real pessimist) claims:

Large areas would become ecological deserts. The Delta is a wildlife refuge with cattle herders depending on it for centuries as well. There is no commitment to mitigation for the damage that will be done and no evidence that local incomes will be in any way improved.

*Cough*loser*cough*! Excuse me.

Here, Richard Branson, after publicly admitting that his investments in corn ethanol were a mistake, goes on to say:

"But, ah, there are countries in the world like Africa [actually a continent], um, like Mozambique, where they have got sugarcane plantations lying wasted, doing nothing ..."

Can words describe how bad corn ethanol is?

Well, maybe my words can't describe how bad corn ethanol is, or Mayor Bloomberg's, or those of top scientists, but I think I have found someone's words that do: Opus's from Bloom Country.

First, however, the lastest grim news from Fortune: "The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike." Yes, "plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months." Why?

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

If you can't make money with oil at $100 a barrel, you are not much of an alternative fuel.

But I know what you're thinking -- if corn ethanol is so bad, what's wrong with plants being scrapped? Well, the corn ethanol business is here to stay. The corn ethanol mandate from the most recent energy bill requires doubling supply from current levels. Fortune explains what that means:

Forbes says that Frankenfruits are already here

In the mid-’90s, amid much fuss, a biotech firm called Calgene introduced the Flav’r Saver tomato. Genetically engineered to last longer on the shelf, the Flav’r Saver didn’t turn out to have much “flav’r” to save. To make a long story short, consumers generally steered clear of it; farmers had trouble growing it; Calgene burned […]

Bam!

TV chef Emeril Lagasse kicks it up a notch.

Personal miscellany break

Dear people who have sent me email in the last month or so, to whom I honestly meant to reply — even marked the email "important" — but still haven’t yet, I’m sorry. I lost a week to a snowboarding vacation, another week to being distracted by the thought that I wanted to drop out […]

Roger Clemens doesn’t know what a vegan is

This is a couple of weeks old, but it is still awesome:

‘Doomsday’ seed vault opens in Arctic, awaits doom

A so-called “doomsday” seed vault opened in the Arctic today that’s designed to store up to 4.5 million seeds as a backup for the world’s food crops (and other seed banks) just in case something ultra-tragic happens. The $9.1 million Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built into the side of a mountain some 620 miles […]

The beef recall shows yet again that the USDA doesn’t protect schoolchildren

The USDA recently took action to force the recall of 143 million pounds of beef dating back two years -- the largest beef recall in our country's history. More than 25 percent of the recalled beef was distributed free of charge through the USDA's commodity food program to about 150 school districts across the nation.

Undoubtedly, most of this potentially tainted beef has already been eaten by the 30 million children who participate in the National School Lunch Program every day. Clearly, the USDA is not protecting our children. In essence, the agency slammed the barn door shut after the downer (severely sick) cows had staggered out of the feedlots and into school cafeterias.

Why does the USDA fail so miserably at this critical task?

More trouble with ethanol waste as cow chow

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. Remember the good old days, when gigantic meat and dairy producers stuffed cows into feedlots and fed them corn? Sure, cows evolved to eat grass, and corn wears out their livers (and makes their digestive tracts friendly to E. coli 0157, a […]

Survey of ‘experts’ on genetic food tampering leaves out farmers

This is sad. Billed as a survey of what "farmers" think of genetic tampering with food crops, the survey left out one important group: farmers. Restricting itself to large-scale commodity growers, the survey is garbage in, garbage out.

I doubt that such notables as Gene Logsdon, Wendell Berry, and Joel Salatin would qualify as "experts" to these folk.