fantapolitica
humorous look at Italian politics (bilingual)Friday, September 14, 2007
Obesity and Global warming catturando 2 piccioni con una fava
Italy gets some attention
NO PASTA FOR YOU! Italians are on spaghetti strike today, refusing to buy all pasta in protest of a 20 percent increase in consumer prices, caused in part by demand for wheat as a biofuel. The average Italian eats pasta once a day, or 61 pounds of the starchy goodness annually.
While Italians might be incensed over expensive orchiette, the biofuel bull market affects food supplies all over the world, and developing countries will be hit hardest. In Mexico, where many poor, rural people survive on a diet built around nutritious corn tortillas, the ethanol rush is responsible for tripling and quadrupling the price of food staples. And ethanol production has a dark side in the United States' food system as well; the more corn we grow, the more we subsidize growing corn, which has already led to the massive, obesity-causing overuse of corn syrup in our diet. It's all food for thought the next time you hear a presidential candidate wax eloquent on the wonders of ethanol.
I comment
Watch out for typos. Italians are angry about overpriced Orichieti, Orchieti would be small testicles whose price is not affected by biofuels.
Also why not buy corn syrup for biofuels ?
Drive up the price of corn syrup as a replacement for corn price supports. Sounds good to me.
The point is that ethanol subsidies should be used to drive up the price of unhealthy foods not healthy foods. So the subsidy should be to purchases of corn syrup for conversion to ethanol not on production of ethanol.
Also we should import ethanol of course.
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