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Machines Competing With Man For Staple Food By Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa
What else can be more dangerous than creating Frankenstein cars that gobble ethanol made from corn, the most stable food for world’s poor? Today it is corn, when we run short of corn, it is cassava, then rice, millet, wheat and barley. It never stops. Oh, the rational is that we want to save energy and diversify our resources. That sounds good to many people but not to some of us.
We know how far a man will go to please his priced possession called car. This writer was not innocent of that either because he kept a classic junk for a long time that took money away from more deserving needs. You may have heard or know that wives and cars compete for men’s attention or men and cars competing for women. We have to wake up and realize that engine is for our convenience and not for our destruction. O.K, cars kill us everyday, so do we have to ban them into achieves?
We can be a friend of the environment and still see beyond our noses on where engine dependency on corn can lead us. Brazil seems to have gone far in the production of ethanol from sugarcane and their Petrobas negotiated to sell 20 millions liters of ethanol to Nigeria ‘s NNPC. The hope is Nigeria, with their technical support will be able to produce its own from our raw food material and reduce our dependency on oil from the producing areas. Not so fast, please. Sugar cane plantation is worse. We do not have to go to heaven to ask our forefathers taken as slaves.
There are certain facts missing though. Most of the information that have been gathered took into consideration the amount of energy needed to produce the corn or sugar cane and turn it into ethanol. We have to take fuel that will be used by tractors, transportation fuel to storage tanks and ethanol filling stations. Ethanol can not be piped because of absorption of impurities and water. By the end of the day, the amount of fuel used will be equal to the amount saved. The only losers are the poor who are going to pay more for the remaining corn not converted to ethanol.
Some of us are already paying the price now. The price of beef, chicken, hogs and sheep are going up because they also feed on corn and cassava. As more corn is diverted, farmers have to pay more for animal feed. Of course that will be passed on to us. If you are a vegetarian, you are not off the hook either. If more farmers shift to corn production for ethanol, less land will be available for other vegetarian diets.
A couple of years ago in Nigeria, the price of gari were almost the same or more than the price of foreign subsidized rice because we found a market for our cassava in China. The slang then was: Obasanjo has turned food of the rich to that of the poor and food of the poor to the rich. The Agriculture minister who never stretched to buy gari said we should be happy. He had a point but had nothing in place then to increase production in order to meet home demand. Moreover, we need to find markets for finished products not raw materials that are far cheaper. One finished product can buy many raw materials.
Others argue that United States can feed itself and the world with so few farmers because of technology. That technology, like tractor, is not cheap either. Monsanto and DuPont produce all kinds of seeds that do not reproduce and farmers have to go back and buy them for each planting season. All we need to do is ask Indian farmers who have borrowed more than they can afford, loosing their lands as collateral and committing suicide. That is a different topic for another day.
Now that we have Zimbabwe farmers planting in Kwara, Nigerians may wake up and utilize home grown technology from our universities to save ourselves. So in a continent that can hardly feed itself, how much maize we are ready to devote to ethanol remain to be seen. There is nothing wrong with moving along with the rest of the world, but we have to weigh our own interest to suit our local needs.
Nigeria has different types of machines, from cars, trucks to generators. Indeed, Lagos State has decided to cramp down on polluting generators. Ethanol is still not the answer in my humble opinion. That is why waste as a source of power generation is more attractive. Lately, implementation of turkey and cow wastes moved beyond experimental stage, they produce methane for power in the US. Our beautiful ideas in Nigeria in many cases are short-circuited by political jealousy that prevents implementation. Jakande, as Governor taunted waste to riches before Tinubu. There are a few states in Nigeria now implementing solar energy as street light.
I once asked a friend I used to work with in Primary Health Care, what they were doing about leaded petrol. He looked at me and said I had gone crazy. Now we have unleaded petrol and many children are saved from lead poisoning. At that time my friend was more concerned about more demanding problems like parasitic and infectious diseases. All it took was someone powerful enough to see to its implementation.
Ethanol production as a source of fuel will eventually deprive us of food. Hydrogen, hybrid cars combining oil with electricity from batteries are preferable because they do not take food out of our mouth. In many of the countries where their politicians love and cherish people campaign for votes; the cost of food is so low compared to rent, many poor people develop another type of disease we already know as obesity. In my Country, a fat man is a rich man, evidence of good living.
We still look back in admiration the days Nigeria used to feed most of West Africa. The poisonous curse of oil has turned us into importer of food from our neighbors because our militricians, militants and the well connected have turned into oil farmers. The cost of food in Nigeria without ethanol makes some people go without a meal or two during the day. So the last thing we want is an engine that will take food away from our stomach. Full belly can not tell hungry belly to take heed. |