From cellulose talk to wood stock

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: which in turn requires more farm production that translates into more land under the plough, more water for irrigation and more energy to produce fertilisers and other farm inputs. On the other, if this ravenous appetite goes unabated, the two largest producers of grains would soon turn to be importers of food which won’t do them much good either.

Already in the US, the onset of the biofuels gold rush and diversion of grains for ethanol production has doubled feed prices for farm animals, resulting in more expensive meat and poultry. Moreover, depleting reserve stocks diverted for biofuel production would mean less grains as food aid to the most needy and critically defunct nations riddled with massive hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Far worse, several farmers in the West, lured by higher prices for grains, are giving crop rotation a skip, repeating corn after a crop of corn, a decisively unhealthy farm practice that could boomerang badly in the days ahead.