As more people in China have more money to spend, one of the things they
want to spend it on is pork. So the demand for pork is rising. And with
it, the demand for feed is rising. Specifically, corn. I keep coming
across stories like these:
To quote the second article: "Rather than becoming more dependent on imported meat, Mr. Urlich expects China will favour purchasing more feed grains. This should lead to a greater reliance on imported corn for the growing livestock and poultry sector.
"In fact, both the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and China’s state-affiliated agricultural information service provider, estimate that corn imports will reach 5 million tons in 2011/2012 from 1.5 million tons in the previous year."
Those who say we should not use food to make fuel may not mean to say it, but what they're unwittingly proposing is something like this: "We should forget about energy independence, national security, and economic vitality so people in China can eat more pork."
In other words, the "food versus fuel" argument means we should not use our land to grow feedstocks to make fuel, but instead we should use it to grow corn and export it to China because they really like to eat pork.
I think if most Americans were given the choice, we would choose to give up our addiction to oil, and leave it to China to work out their pork addiction problem themselves.
Besides that, as America grows more crops for fuel, it helps the poorer farmers in the rest of the world make a better living (while producing more food to feed the world). Read more about that in the book, Sustainable Ethanol.
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