Bad
policy, not biofuel, drive
food prices: Merkel
Reuters ^ | 4/17/08 | Gernot Heller
Environmentalists
and humanitarian groups (When or where have
environmentalists called for the end of environmental Bio-fuel programs.) have stepped up campaigning against biofuels,
arguing they divert production away from food and animal feed while
contributing to sharp rises in the price of cereals and milk products.
But Merkel,
whose country is Europe's largest biofuel producer, (Here is the hard conformation of the EU’s
bio-fuels program, that has gone until now unreported – as spoken of here by
the Word of the Lord.) said the rise in food prices was not mainly
due to biofuels but to "inadequate agricultural
policies in developing countries" as well as "insufficient forecasts
of changes in nutritional habits" in emerging markets.
"If you travel to
"People are eating twice a day, and if a
third of one billion people in
"And if they suddenly consume
twice as much food as before (As they did before now when food prices were cheaper.
Heartless, heartless talk from Merkel) and
if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too,
then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too,"
she said referring to EU limits on dairy production.
Biofuels, which are seen by supporters as a way to increase energy
security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are made mainly from food crops
such as grains, oilseeds and sugar.
Critics argue there are few, if any, environmental
benefits for so-called first generation biofuels.
They have also been blamed for increasing grain demand and pushing up prices at
a time of growing threat of famine in some parts of the world.
The FAO and the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have said biofuels
were "one of the main drivers" for forecasts of food price increases
of 20 percent to 50 percent by 2016.