Keep your hands off farming!

"These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70 percent of its farmland with fuel crops. The entire corn and soy harvest of the United States would need to be processed as ethanol and biodiesel. Converting most arable land to fuel crops would destroy the food systems of the North, so the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries are looking to the South to meet demand."

From a recent article in th IHT. It looks like everyone is now arming against agro-fuel (we should stop using the word biofuel, it gives a false impression that it is green and harmless). the article goes on:

"The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the biofuels industry is extreme. Over the past three years, venture capital investment in biofuels has increased by 800 percent. Private investment is swamping public research institutions."

I have read in a brief piece of news in the Guardian that more than $70 billions were invested in wind and solar power and agro-fuel, up 43% on 2005. But what is really worrying is the fact that the South is now set to produce most of it, at the cost of its own food systems. In a talk he gave a few weeks ago, Lebanese opposition economist George Corm gave the example of agro-fuels as a direction in which the country's agricultural sector could go to rebuild its production sector. Now the good thing is that no one will listen to him, but I don't know if you realize how silly this proposal is. Just imagine how much imported diesel would be needed to pump deep, barely renewable underground water to make corn to make biofuel to export to the North.

Farming is too serious a sector to be managed by economists.