Food prices, oil prices are all going up up up. Rice is being hoarded, riots happening in Haiti, Iowa farmers buying tracts of land in Roraima State here in Brazil. The price of corn, wheat and rice is going through the roof. Droughts in Australia, along with the appetite for ethanol are being considered the major cause of this price increase.
When I went to Calgary a few weeks ago to visit family, I flew from Rio via Houston and then up to Calgary. I call it the petroleum milk run. All three cities are major oil cities, so the chances of sitting next to a petroleum person is very high. As it turned out, I sat next to a woman who is part of Petrobras in Houston, and she works in the ethanol division.
I asked her about the ethanol industry in Brazil and in the rest of the world and i learned something very interesting. In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar cane. The leftover of the sugar cane is used as fuel to power the ethanol plant. Talk about sustainability and non polluting! In contrast, the ethanol plants in the US use corn to extract ethanol and the husks are not used to power the ethanol plants. They need to burn coal....
We need to stop using major food sources to make ethanol. Sugarcane is NOT a major food source, corn wheat and rice are.
Petrobras is poised to kick some butt in the near future.....
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