Monday, April 28, 2008

Did Fidel Castro predict the world food crisis?

It's probably exaggerated to consider former Cuban president Fidel Castro as a prophet, but over a year ago he warned about problems that have led to rising food prices. As we posted in March 2007, the convalescing Castro wrote the following in Granma:

  • The sinister idea of using food as fuel was definitely established as the economic component of U.S. foreign policy.
  • The tragedy is not in reducing energy but in the notion of converting foodstuffs into fuel.
  • Give financing to poor counties to produce ethanol from corn or some other crop and there won’t be a single tree to defend humanity against global warming.
  • In our country, lands that are used for alcohol production would be more suitable to produce food for the people and to protect the environment.
Castro might have been correct in at least one respect; U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the increasing use of biofuels has had “apparently some effect” on food prices.

Sources- Reuters Africa, AFP, The Latin Americanist

Image- MSNBC

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's missing from this whole debate is that this thing called ethanol may be 100% "bio" but of the 4 billion gallons produced in the U.S., less than one percent is used as "fuel."

The other 99%?

Ethanol is the only additive used to oxygenize gasoline, ensure a more complete combustion, and consequently, better air quality during the spring and summer months in many of the major gasoline markets in the U.S.

So, even if we were not pursuing "biofuels" we'd still be in this mess.

Anonymous said...

Yep, If Condi admits it, it must be "correct". Otherwise, there's no evidence for the claims. They are only true if the U.S. government says they are.

Did you ever hear of 'critical thinking'?

Pepito

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