by Paul Kemp

Created on: April 23, 2008

How can anything be more important than affordable food? Are those arguing the other side of this question thinking that THEY and THEIR FRIENDS can have both alternative fuel and affordable food, while many people they'll never meet go without? That's the way it will be if our political leaders continue subsidizing the use of food crops to produce fuel for our vehicles.

Fortunately, this is not an either/or choice. We can have both affordable food and fuel, theoretically, so long as the fuel is not made from food. But, pray tell - What is it? And will this replacement for petroleum arrive in time to avert massive starvation and economic dislocation?

Part of the problem is that Americans, in particular, have become accustomed to having a very efficient (and cheap!) source of energy for the past 100 years, around which we have built an economy and social patterns that can't be replicated with any of the current prospective replacement fuels. Petroleum is an uniquely powerful source of energy per unit of volume.

The other part of our problem is that, because of the awkward way we have designed our daily lives - i.e. the need to truck much of our food thousands of miles to reach hungry city-dwellers and the habit we have of driving many miles to work and back each day - we have a huge need for energy. Our cars and trucks run on fossil fuels, our electricity and heating needs are powered largely by fossil fuels, and our roads, many building materials, and industrial raw materials are all dependent on petroleum or natural gas by-products.

Now extremely populous countries like China and India want to emulate our love affair with the automobile, so they are speeding the decline of reserves that we all must compete for.

To give you an idea of how much energy it takes to maintain our present American addiction to oil alone, half of the ethanol produced by Brazil would only provide 2% of the U.S. fuel needs.

Further complicating this conundrum is the sad fact that much of the world's population, for one reason or the other, can no longer grow their own food. Their soil may be depleted from centuries of poor cultivation, they have reproduced beyond the carrying capacity of the land, or the majority has moved to the cities to find work other than subsistence farming. It appears the only way much of the world can eat is dependent on the hyper-productivity permitted by the liberal use of oil and natural gas-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Without these magic substances,

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