Pet Project

Here's an alternative energy source, that doesn't involve turning food into fuel. Well, at least the first time through the cycle.

The problem was immediate and unquestionable: dog poop on his shoe, but the solution didn't come to Vancouver park board commissioner Spencer Herbert until he was wiping it off.

"At first I was angry, and then as I was cleaning, I thought, how do we deal with this better?" said Herbert. "We think just throwing it out in the garbage means we're done with it."

Herbert said yesterday he began questioning why all the dog waste in Vancouver should go to waste. Responsible owners picked up their dog droppings in plastic bags to throw away, and the irresponsible just left it on the grass or sidewalk.

He soon discovered San Francisco was pondering the same problem and looking at the possibility of turning dog waste into bio-fuels to heat homes.

The proposal in California is still in its pre-planning stage with a feasibility study, but Herbert would like to see the idea take form in Vancouver. Dog waste would be collected at neighbourhood drop-off spots and deposited in a vat for bacteria to digest, leaving methane gas as the end result. The methane could then be used to heat and light park washrooms or greenhouses.

Jeez, if this works out, I could be energy independent around here. With four dogs you can imagine how much I have to clean up. Well, at least I don't have small kids around.

As the father of two soccer goalie players, Robertson said he knows the agony of watching his sons attempt a save only to fall in dog poop.

Ethanol vs. Hunger - Part IV

I told you so [1, 2, 3]. Now, even the USDA admits it.

Strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department said in its monthly crop report. Ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's corn crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop.

The price of corn, the main feed for livestock, has driven the cost of feeding chickens up 40 percent, according to the National Chicken Council. The council says that chicken, the most popular meat with consumers, will soon cost more at the grocery store. The industry worries the competition from ethanol could cause a shortage of corn.

Ethanol vs. Hunger, Part III

The Wall Street Journal also takes note of the problem. -

...the percentage of the U.S. corn crop devoted to ethanol has risen to 20% from 3% in just five years, or about 8.6 million acres of farmland. Reaching the President's target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017 would, at present corn yields, require the entire U.S. corn harvest.

No wonder, then, that the price of corn rose nearly 80% in 2006 alone. (See the chart nearby.) Corn growers and their Congressmen love this, and naturally they are planting as much as they can. Look for a cornfield in your neighborhood soon. Yet for those of us who like our corn flakes in the morning, the higher price isn't such good news. It's even worse for cattle, poultry and hog farmers trying to adjust to suddenly exorbitant prices for feed corn--to pick just one industry example. The price of corn is making America's meat-packing industries, which are major exporters, less competitive.

In Mexico, the price of corn tortillas--the dietary staple of the country's poorest--has risen by about 30% in recent months, leading to widespread protests and price controls. In China, the government has put a halt to ethanol-plant construction for the threat it poses to the country's food security. Thus is a Beltway fad translated into Third World woes.

And, even they recognize that this may not do much for energy independence or air pollution, -

As for the environmental impact, well, where do we begin? As an oxygenate, ethanol increases the level of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere and thus causes smog. The scientific literature is also divided about whether the energy inputs required to produce ethanol actually exceed its energy output. It takes fertilizer to grow the corn, and fuel to ship and process it, and so forth. Even the most optimistic estimate says ethanol's net energy output is a marginal improvement of only 1.3 to one. For purposes of comparison, energy outputs from gasoline exceed inputs by an estimated 10 to one.

But what about global warming, where ethanol, as a non-fossil fuel, is supposed to make a positive contribution? Actually, it barely makes a dent. Australian researcher Robert Niven finds that the use of ethanol in gasoline--the standard way in which ethanol is currently used--reduces greenhouse gas emissions by no more than 5%. As Messrs. Taylor and Van Doren observe, "employing ethanol to reduce greenhouse gases is fantastically inefficient," costing as much as 16 times the optimal abatement cost for removing a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

Ethanol vs. Hunger, Part II

I posted a few days ago about the cost of tortillas going up so that the poor in Mexico can't afford to eat their most basic foodstuff. Now, their President has capped the price.

Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to expensive tortillas. That, in turn, has led to lower sales for vendors such as Rosales and angry protests by consumers.

The uproar is exposing this country's outsize dependence on tortillas in its diet -- especially among the poor -- and testing the acumen of the new president, Felipe Calderón. It is also raising questions about the powerful businesses that dominate the Mexican corn market and are suspected by some lawmakers and regulators of unfair speculation and monopoly practices.

Tortilla prices have tripled or quadrupled in some parts of Mexico since last summer. On Jan. 18, Calderón announced an agreement with business leaders capping tortilla prices at 78 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, less than half the highest reported prices. The president's move was a throwback to a previous era when Mexico controlled prices -- the government subsidized tortillas until 1999, at which point cheap corn imports were rising under the NAFTA trade agreement. It was also a surprise given his carefully crafted image as an avowed supporter of free trade.

Think that's funny?

Poor Mexicans get more than 40 percent of their protein from tortillas, according to Amanda Gálvez, a nutrition expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Gálvez said she believes the price increase is already steering Mexicans toward less nutritious foods. The typical Mexican family of four consumes about one kilo -- 2.2 pounds -- of tortillas each day. In some areas of Mexico, the price per kilo has risen from 63 cents a year ago to between $1.36 and $1.81 earlier this month.

With a minimum wage of $4.60 a day, Mexican families with one wage earner have been faced in recent months with the choice of having to spend as much as a third of their income on tortillas -- or eating less or switching to cheaper alternatives.

Many poor Mexicans, Gálvez said, have been substituting cheap instant noodles, which often sell for as little as 27 cents a cup and are loaded with less nutritious starch and sodium.

Can you imagine living on cups of ramen noodles, long term, as the only thing you can afford. I mean, a couple of days at the end of the month for a college student waiting for a check from Dad is one thing, but when it's all you can afford for your entire family, that's not good.

Ethanol vs. Hunger

I've wondered if an effect like this would show up. Increasingly, U.S. corn production is being diverted into the production of ethanol. Corn prices have hit a 10 year high. Now Mexico is seeing the effect.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has pledged to intervene to tackle the soaring price of tortillas, the flat corn bread which is a local staple.

The price of tortillas, the main source of calories for many of Mexico's poor, rose by more than 10% last year.

They had been relying on the U.S. -

Under the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico used to get cheap corn imports from the US, but Mexico's Economy Minister Eduardo Sojo said that with more US corn being diverted into ethanol production, supply was dwindling.

I'm wondering if we are going to be seeing even more of this soon. What happens when corn and soybeans surpluses are diverted to biodiesel production? Will this effect U.S. food prices? I take it as a given that the cheap exports to third world countries will end.

It also seems to me that the 'green pioneer' biodiesel makers are going to be up the creek shortly. You know, those garage tinkerers who are turning used french fry oil into fuel? Because if NYC is going to ban the use of trans fats, followed by others, where will the garage-gurus get their free-for-the-taking oil.

I'm guessing that some people will find this change good. Our farmers certainly wouldn't mind collecting record high corn and soybean prices. Which allows us to lower trade barriers to imports from small, poor farmers around the world. And then, ummm, they send their grain to us to turn into automobile fuel rather than selling it cheaply to other poor people in their home country cities. Leading to even more hunger.

Is this what happens when Dr. Malthus meets Murphy? Apparently, some others think so as well.