Oil for Food or Food for Oil?

The International Energy Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy estimate that the current rate of oil production, 120 million barrels/day, will decrease to 106 million barrels, by the year 2020. This is predicted using Hubbert’s peak. (Brown, p.32) There is strong scientific evidence that suggests approximately 95% of conventional oil has already been discovered. The majority of the remaining oil is thought to be contained in tar sands and below the Arctic tundra. Other supporting evidence that this projection is incorrect is derived from calculations of the productivity of current large oil fields. Researchers have calculated that many of the large, operating oil fields, discovered in the 1950s and 1960s, are already close to their peak production.(p.33) Many nations, such as the United States and Canada, have already experienced a decline in production rates. These nations are now resorting to more desperate attempts for extracting oil. All of which are increasingly hazardous to the environment, take the refining of tar sands for example.

The increasing demand for petroleum, and the continual decline of its production, has served as a major initiative to look towards alternative sources of energy. One alternative, that was seen to have some promise, is ethanol. Ethanol is a fuel derived from the processing of corn. The prospect that ethanol may one day compensate for our oil demands dissolves rather quickly, when the production and resource costs are examined. Ethanol has many shortcomings, the first of which is the necessary component of petroleum in ethanol’s production, and secondly the fact that production requires more energy than is gained.

Adding to these energy inefficiencies is the fact that as more corn is used for ethanol production there will be less available to feed the population. The increase in corn prices, because of decreased food supply, leads to higher grain prices and food shortages throughout the world. The effects of ethanol production on food supply and grain price has already been observed in many countries. Another downfall of ethanol production is the demand for petroleum-based fertilizer to grow the corn; without synthetic fertilizers it would not be possible to grow corn on such a large scale.

Lester Brown describes the inefficiencies of ethanol in his book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. He states that, “81 million tons of the 2007 U.S. corn harvest used to produce 8.3 billion gallons of ethanol represents one-fifth of the country’s entire grain harvest, but will supply less than 4 percent of its automotive fuel”. Brown also points out the fact that if the United States' entire grain harvest was converted into ethanol it would only satisfy 18% of the automotive fuel needs. To put into perspective this imbalance between “corn for food” and “corn for fuel”, the amount of corn required to produce 25 gallons of ethanol equals the amount of corn needed to feed an individual for an entire year. This greatly affects food security in many poorer nations. Food security refers to the availability of food and access to it. The ultimate consequences of this would lead to massive food shortages, riots and political instability in nations around the world; resulting in a disturbance of global economic progress.

Brown, Lester. Plan B 3.0. 1st ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. 27-47. Print.