Prospectus

For my research paper in this class, I’d like to look at the Global Food Crisis.

I’ve found some really good sources from trustworthy places, and these are helping me shape my specific research question. This Washington Post series (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/26/AR2008042601723.html) is absolutely fascinating and very informative about the different aspects of food shortages around the world and how they have been escalating since the 1970s. In addition to discussing global food shortages, it discusses Africa in particular, American price increases, the corn-ethanol problem, and the problem with growing less wheat, as the US is currently doing. Then, this USAID webpage (http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/foodcrisis/) details both the problems involved with the food crisis and current US programs and statistics, so you can get a good idea of what areas the US is most concerned about. This statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (https://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=867) does a good job explaining the history of the Global Food Crisis and its specific causes. All of these articles date within the past two years, so it seems that if this is a representative sample, it won’t be hard to find plenty of information about this issue.

Other sources:

http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=AWNB&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=11D66C4381644320&p_docnum=1&p_queryname=1

“Food Prices: The End of Cheap Food” from the Economist

Just like it sounds, this article discusses how the practice of turning corn and wheat into widely subsidized biofuels is driving up food costs, and why that’s a problem. It’s not a very long article, but it’s very specific.

http://ethanol.org/

This site I’ll just be using for facts about ethanol, because I really don’t know much about it. The section on Food and Fuel is probably pretty biased, but their Ethanol 101 section is very detailed and scientific, and I think that will be helpful.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea//news/article/2008/05/ethanol-lowers-gas-prices-29-40-cents-per-gallon-52564

A news story from 2008 discussing how ethanol drove down gas prices. I don’t really have anything pro ethanol (that I’ll be using), so I thought it would be useful to point out that it does have good qualities, which is why choosing between food and fuel can be trickier than it initially seems.

http://deltafarmpress.com/markets/crop-production-0108/

A story from the Delta Agriculture news site which notes without adding much comment the ups and downs of the corn and wheat harvests for 2008, mentioning at the start that statistics “tell a troubling story for the US ethanol industry.” It’s a different look at the situation.

There are also facts in both the “Rescuing Children” document (pg. 261, briefly discusses link between malnourished children and rising food prices) and the “Looming Water Crisis” document (also CQ Global Researcher, the Outlook part, titled “Thirst and Hunger”) I plan on using, and there’s an honors thesis by Cathryn Wile, an Honors Fellow who graduated in 2008, entitled “The viability of corn, sugar, and cellulosic ethanol as alternative fuel sources: a political, social, economic and environmental analysis.” I don’t know if it will be at all helpful because I haven’t seen it, but it sounds interesting and I want to at least take a look at it, especially since I’m an Honors Fellow and was already planning a trip to the library archives to look at past theses.

Anyway, looking at these, I think that I would like to concentrate on the problem posed by the increased use of ethanol made by corn. It’s a topic that has both positive and decidedly negative consequences. Ethanol is more eco-friendly than using fossil fuels, but using so much of the world’s corn supply for fuel results in food shortages that are truly damaging. As corn is used in many, many food products, shortages result in higher prices for more items than you’d think. I would want to look into such price hikes, plus the areas most affected by corn shortages and just how they are affected, and also how food, fuel, and money interact. It would be important to find out different countries’ strategies for improving the corn/ethanol problem, and to analyze their effectiveness. I think this should be able to be shaped into a decent paper; there’s plenty of material to work with, as this is a very current and fairly well-publicized issue.