Harry Siemens – The director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues warns society will ultimately have to decide whether farmers should be producing food or fuel.

The U.S. government recently mandated the increased use of biodiesel and ethanol fuel.

Center for Global Food issues director Dennis Avery estimates global farm output will have to double just to meet demand for food and feed by 2050.

“So increased biofuel production means you’re not going to feed everybody or you’re going to have to clear the world’s remaining forests for low yield crops,” said Avery at a recent pork conference in Banff. “We’re not only going to be required to feed eight or nine billion affluent people and their pets but they want us to free North America from its so called addiction to fossil fuels by growing a lot of biofuels. I’m afraid this is an ugly diversion from the real purpose of farming.”

He told the Banff audience in America, the industry is getting a net of 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per year. America’s annual gasoline demand is 140 billion gallons and there’s simply not enough land.

“Then we say, well we want all of our food to be organic,” he said. “The yields on organic farms are about half as high because organic farmers refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer. A great deal of the weight of feeding the world is going to fall on the high yield farmers and I think we’re going to have to choose between food and fuel.”

Avery stresses the evidence for needing biofuels is shaky. Despite talk of a scientific consensus on man made global warming, the reality is 70 percent of warming occurred before 1940 and 80 percent of human emitted CO2 came after 1940.

He notes net global warming since 1940 is two tenths of a degree Celsius and there has been no increase in the world temperature over the past nine years.