The true cost of fighting global warming...

[Cyclefrance]

... and you won't even be able to cry into your beer about it!

(OK, a link would have been better probably, but I've gone and pasted it in now...)


Trouble brews in Germany as biofuel boom jacks up price of beer
2007-05-28 08:30:45 -

AYING, Germany (AP) - Like most Germans, brewer Helmut Erdmann is all for the fight against global warming. Unless, that is, it drives up the price of his beer.

And that is exactly what is happening to Erdmann and other German brewers as farmers abandon barley _ the raw material for the national beverage _ to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally-friendly biofuels.

«Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany _ people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk,» said Erdmann, director of the family-owned Ayinger brewery in Aying, an idyllic village nestled between Bavaria's rolling hills and dark forests with the towering Alps on the far horizon.

«With the current spike in barley prices, we won't be able to avoid a price increase of our beer any longer,» Erdmann said, stopping to sample his freshly brewed, golden product right from the steel fermentation kettle.

In the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to ¤200 (US$271) from ¤102 per ton as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or bio-diesel, a fuel made from vegetable oil.

As a result, the price for the key ingredient in beer _ barley malt, or barley that has been allowed to germinate _ has soared by more than 40 percent, to around ¤385 (US$522) per ton from around ¤270 a ton two years ago, according to the Bavarian Brewers' Association.

For Germany's beer drinkers that is scary news: their beloved beverage _ often dubbed 'liquid bread' because it is a basic ingredient of many Germans' daily diet is getting more expensive. While some breweries have already raised prices, many others will follow later this year, brewers say.

Talk about higher beer prices has not gone unnoticed by consumers. Sitting at a long wooden table under leafy chestnut trees at the Prater, one of Berlin's biggest beer gardens, Volker Glutsch, 37, complained bitterly.

«It's absolutely outrageous that beer is getting even more expensive,» Glutsch said, gulping down the last swig of his half-liter dark beer at lunch. «But there's nothing we can do about it except drinking less and that's not going to happen.»

A meager barley harvest last year in Germany and barley-exporting countries such as France, Australia and Canada has compounded the problem. The price rise is squeezing breweries - many of them smaller, family-owned enterprises that can ill afford it.

The Ayinger Brewery, which has 65 employees and has been family owned since its founding in 1878, produces 7.5 million liters (1.98 million gallons) of beer each year and purchases most of the ingredients from farmers nearby.

Eventually, Erdmann and other brewers say, it is drinkers who will bear the brunt of the higher costs for raw materials.

Already, at the annual brewery festival in Aying this week, prices for Erdmann's Ayinger beer were up at ¤6.40 (US$8.60) from last year's ¤6.10 for a one-liter (34 fluid ounce) mug. That's no small matter for Bavarians, who are among the world's heaviest beer drinkers. They put away about 160 liters (42 gallons) of beer a year - well above the already high German average of 115 liters (30.38 gallons) per person.

And organizers of the world-famous Oktoberfest in Munich have announced a 5.5 percent price increase: A one-liter mug will cost up to ¤7.90 (US$10.70) at this year's autumn beer festival - the highest price ever.

Brewers predict that higher barley prices will add about ¤1 (US$1.35) to each 10-liter case of beer, but the German Farmers Association disputes that, saying the figure is about 33 cents (45 U.S. cents). Other factors like higher salaries and energy prices are also jacking up prices.

«The financial pressure on Germany's small and medium-sized breweries is immense,» brewers association head Walter Koenig said. «The increasing costs of raw materials may become a serious threat for many breweries.»

«Beer drinkers across the country will get upset when beer prices will rise even further in the fall,» said Koenig. «We are therefore demanding that government stop its subsidies for biofuels immediately.»

However, in its first major report on bioenergy, the United Nations tried to temper enthusiasm over biofuels last week, warning that the diversion of land to grow crops for fuel will increase prices for basic food commodities.

That is what happened in Mexico, when increased demand for corn to make ethanol in the United States pushed up the price of tortillas.

The German government subsidizes biofuel crops at the rate of ¤45 per hectare (US$24.60 per acre), according to the Agency for Renewable Energies, part of the Agriculture Ministry.

Barley production in Germany went down by 5.5 percent - from 542,000 hectares in 2006 to 514,000 hectares in 2007, according to the Bavarian Farmers Association. On the other hand, the production of corn for biofuel more than doubled last year and the production of rapeseed for biofuel grew by 3.4 percent.

Biofuels, which reduce the emission of greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world's soaring energy needs than with greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels. European leaders have decided that at least 10 percent of fuels will come from biofuels by 2020.

Germany leads in the consumption of bioenergy in Europe with an annual usage of 4.3 percent of overall fuel consumption, according to figures by the Agency of Renewable Energies. Germany also is among the leaders in producing wind energy and recycling garbage.

Beer prices are serious business in Bavaria, which has some 615 breweries and gave Germany its famed beer purity law, which dates back to 1516 and in its current form permits only four ingredients: malted grain, hops, yeast and water.

Farmers say the brewers share some of the blame.

«For years there was an oversupply and we couldn't make any profits with barley and that's why we switched to biofuel crops,» said Anton Stuerzer, 43, who grows barley and rapeseed at his farm in the neighboring village of Hoehenkirchen.

«It serves the brewers right that they have to pay those high prices now _ they should have paid us fair prices even when there was too much barley available.»

[Aliantha]

OMG!! What about oktoberfest?

[lizzymahoney]

Stick with homebrewing. Support your local growers if you have them.

Oddly, I was looking for pearl barley the other day and thought it odd that I couldn't find it. (Maybe I should look behind the refrigerator?)

The only stores that carried any were organic food stores and the price was significantly higher than I wanted. Something like $2/lb. I was expecting maybe $.50/lb.

[BigV]

Beer's bad enough, but when the source of 40% of your protein triples in price, now you have a problem.

A Culinary and Cultural Staple in Crisis
Mexico Grapples With Soaring Prices for Corn -- and Tortillas

Tortilla prices have tripled or quadrupled in some parts of Mexico since last summer. On Jan. 18, Calderón announced an agreement with business leaders capping tortilla prices at 78 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, less than half the highest reported prices. The president's move was a throwback to a previous era when Mexico controlled prices -- the government subsidized tortillas until 1999, at which point cheap corn imports were rising under the NAFTA trade agreement. It was also a surprise given his carefully crafted image as an avowed supporter of free trade.

"There are certainly some contradictions in Calderón's positions here," said Arturo Puente, an economist at the National Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research in Mexico City.

Calderón's administration portrayed the cap as a get-tough measure that, coupled with his earlier approval of new corn imports from the United States and other countries, would stem the crisis. In an interview two days before the price-cap announcement, Calderón's undersecretary of industry and commerce, Rocio Ruíz Chávez, boasted that Mexico's tortilla problems would stabilize in "one to two weeks."

But Calderón's price cap does not carry the force of law. It is "a gentleman's agreement," said Laura Tamayo, a spokeswoman for the Mexico division of Cargill, a Minneapolis-based company that signed the pact and is a major player in the Mexican corn market.

A study this week by the lower house of Mexico's National Congress showed that many tortilla makers are ignoring Calderón's edict. The average price of tortillas is 6 cents higher than the cap, and some shops are charging between 59 cents and $1.04 above the government threshold.

"Going ahead, it looks very good for high corn prices," said William Edwards, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

In another place, a rise in the cost of a single food product might not set off a tidal wave of discontent. But Mexico is different.

"When you talk about Mexico, when you talk about culture and societal roots, when you talk about the economy, you talk about the tortilla," said Lorenzo Mejía, president of a tortilla makers trade group. "Everything revolves around the tortilla."

The ancient Mayans believed they were created by gods who mixed their blood with ground corn. They called themselves "Children of the Corn," a phrase Mexicans still sometimes use to describe themselves.

Poor Mexicans get more than 40 percent of their protein from tortillas, according to Amanda Gálvez, a nutrition expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Modern-day tortilla makers such as Rosales use "an ancient and absolutely wise" Mayan process called "nixtamalizacion," Gálvez said.

[Griff]

Things hurt right now but a lot of American farmers are hanging their hats on corn this year and I bet they make up the difference.

The true cost... ignorance.

[xoxoxoBruce]

They are hanging their hats on corn because of the price and subsidies promised by the feds for fuel corn.

I've seen predictions that the family food budget will grow from an average of 10%, to closer to 45%, in a very short period of time.
1- Because of increased oil prices, which effect everything from growing and processing to transportation and overhead.
2- Competition for the attention of farmers that see corn-fuel as the golden goose.

[Griff]

A lot depends on how many acres that have been idle go back into production. I love how the gov subsidizes corn so it can compete with oil which they subsidize. friggin' asshats

It makes your mind bend thinking about all the cost shifting and protected inefficiency.

[xoxoxoBruce]

farmland that's "Idle" is rarely idle. If they are paying you not to grow corn on that piece, you grow pumpkins, or beans, or hay. Eventually, if it's fallow for more than a year, brush, trees or houses.

[Griff]

Around here a lot of farmland was/is going to brush/woods through inactivity. If the price of corn goes up that land, which isn't very competitive compared to the mid-west, becomes viable at some point. Our housing market is ok but many farmers would rather conserve a way of life than break up farms, which is why some local real estate folks lie to folks about their intentions.

[smurfalicious]

oh the tragedy!!!


MEXICO CITY - Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.

The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.

"Those growers are going after what pays best now," said Ismael Vicente Ramirez, head of agriculture at Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council.

The large, spiky-leaved agave thrives on high, arid land and can take eight years to reach maturity. To remove the plants, growers cut them at their stems and often burn the fields to remove the roots.

Tequila, drunk in shots and cocktails around the world, is named after a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.


Production of agave, from the lily family, soared in recent years as farmers cashed in on record prices brought about by a shortage of the plant at the start of the decade.

Despite rapid growth in tequila drinking, especially overseas, the over-supply of agave has driven prices for the plant to rock-bottom levels.

Many growers have started to abandon the crop in favor of corn, whose price has rocketed in line with massive growth in U.S. demand for ethanol after President Bush outlined targets last year to use the corn-based fuel as a gasoline alternative.

Agave supply is also being hit this year by disease in the fields, partly due to farmers caring less for the plants after prices dropped.

"The problem that we are going to see, perhaps by mid-2008, is that a lot of agave is sick," Agriculture Ministry official Arnulfo del Toro said. "That will have to be taken out and production is going to drop a lot."

[Griff]

I just switched sides. That is just evil.

[glatt]

No, not the tequila!

[Rexmons]

man i bet that indian guy standing next to the highway is crying his ass off right now

[xoxoxoBruce]

Iron Eyes Cody.

Originally Posted by The Next President of the USA

snip~ many farmers would rather conserve a way of life than break up farms, which is why some local real estate folks lie to folks about their intentions.

I'd say most farmers feel that way and most of them hold out as long as they can.
They'll struggle along, do without, work like hell to preserve the farm.
Then when they've worked themselves to death, the kids will sell out to developers to pay the inheritance tax or money to run off to Tijuana with sluts.