Should food prices be linked to the oil price?
Is it really a wise and ethically acceptable strategy to burn food rather than eat it? This is one of the key questions to be addressed by Prof. Hans Werner Sinn, President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, who will speak at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem next week on ‘Table or Tank: The Rivalry between Biofuels, Fossil Fuels and Nutrition’.
Oil pressed from rapeseed can be used as diesel fuel, and maize or sugar beets can yield ethanol to replace gasoline. The UN and many countries officially share the view that bio-fuel is one option in fighting climate change. The Kyoto Protocol allows countries to meet their target reductions of CO2 emissions by substituting bio-fuels for fossil fuels.
However, Prof. Sinn says, “If we allow food to be used to produce bio-fuels, food prices will be linked to the oil price. Indeed, food prices are currently increasing in Europe, because more and more farmland is being used for bio-fuels instead of for food production. This is not sustainable”
“The problem is that advocates of reducing the greenhouse effect by promoting bio-fuels production have not made clear where the land will come from.”
This, explains, Prof. Sinn, means that taking land for the production of bio-fuels from forests means speeding up global warming, because bio-fuel crops store much less carbon than trees. Prof. Sinn, who is also the Director of the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich, has published numerous studies on the theory of economic cycles, environmental economics, foreign trade issues, and on the micro foundations of a model of temporary general equilibrium.
The D. B. Doran Lecture on Population, Resources and Development, which is being coordinated by the Faculty of Social Sciences, will take place at 6 p.m., Tuesday, May 4, Room 503, Maiersdorf Faculty Club, Mount Scopus campus.
The annual D. B. Doran Lecture was established three years ago. The lecture series is aimed at a better understanding of the complex relationships between demographic processes, limited natural resources and economic development, and at stimulating research in this area.
