Timothy Searchinger, an associate research scholar in the Princeton Environmental Institute, the Wilson School and the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, has received negative feedback for arguing that biofuels have contributed to the world food shortage.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post last Friday titled “How biofuels contribute to the food crisis,” Searchinger said that the media has not focused enough on the growth of the biofuel industry as a factor that contributes to the current global food shortage.
World food prices hit record highs in January 2011, according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report. In his op-ed, Searchinger said that factors such as growing meat consumption in China and “long-term underinvestment in agricultural research” played into the global food crisis, along with climate changes such as the summer droughts in Russia and recent floods in Australia. He explained that these factors have been important but that the media has not focused enough on the growth of the biofuel industry.
“I think that had a lot to do with the confusion that has arisen from the explanations of the food crisis of 2008,” Searchinger said in an e-mail. “I wanted to explain those explanations and also outline why it is obvious that biofuels are a big, big deal.”
Searchinger explained that the growing demand for food is being matched by increased agricultural supply but that additional demand for crops to be converted into biofuels is stressing “inventories and confidence.”
In his piece, Searchinger called for the growth of the biofuel industry to be limited. He said that governments worldwide should “rethink” mandates for increased production of biofuels such as corn ethanol and soybean diesel until agricultural production can sustain both food and fuel.
“Essentially we need to pursue all the alternatives people discuss other than biofuels,” Searchinger said, adding that “we should even pursue the potential for biofuels in a much more limited way, using waste materials and possibly biomass crops if they can truly be produced in high quantities on otherwise degraded and unproductive lands.”
Searchinger’s piece in The Washington Post has garnered protests from organizations that support the increased use of biofuels.
Biofuel advocacy group Growth Energy published a rebuttal of Searchinger’s piece later on Friday.
“Once again displaying his willingness to ignore science, peer-reviewed research and the best available data, Tim Searchinger has authored another intellectually bankrupt attack on farmers and renewable, clean-burning biofuels,” the group posted on its blog.
Growth Energy chief executive Tom Buis said that Searchinger’s article exaggerated the impact biofuels have on the food supply.
“Every ethanol plant in the country turns out animal feed as well as fuel — we only take the starch out of the corn kernel but put all the protein, fiber and oils right back into the food supply as ‘dried distillers grains,’” Buis said in a press release. “Even then, ethanol’s use of the global grain supply is a fraction.”
Buis said that Searchinger’s article “ignores reality.” He explained that global trade agreements, “Wall Street’s rampant speculation” and the domestic farm policies of other countries have done more to drive food prices up than the growth of biofuels.
Searchinger replied that Growth Energy’s rebuttal is “interesting” in light of the industry’s previous claims that biofuels have indeed increased farm prices.
“They claim correctly that ethanol mandates have increased crop prices enough that the government has not had to pay out billions of dollars in direct support payments for low crop prices,” he said. “I therefore do not understand how they can then also claim that biofuels do not increase crop prices.”
“I believe Growth Energy said ... that biofuels are not much of a cause of increased retail food prices in the [United States], which of course my piece points out as well, and also that we should not place all the blame on biofuels, which I wouldn’t do either,” Searchinger noted. “So I don’t think they really answer the piece at all.”
Searchinger also published a paper on the effect of biofuels on greenhouse gas emissions in Science magazine in 2008.
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