Is it moral to use FOOD to FUEL transportation?

[KathleenElsie]

Your argument is based on the assumption that the horses in question would exist anyways. let’s see: Go on and calculate the number of horses per capita in the year 1900 in America. Now calculate the number of horses per capita today.

Back? Betcha today’s ratio is hundreds of times lower than in 1900. Back then horses were bred and brought into the world solely to be a means of transportation and to work. They weren’t pets and when they became obsolete as transportation the number of them plummeted.

So I reiterate: Was it immoral for folks in the 19th century to breed and subsequently feed horses for purposes of transportation?

Horses in the times you mentioned we fed hay and grasses. Very little “hot” feed. “Hot feed” is corn and oats and horses get little of that it just tend to make them fat and lazy LOL.

 

[mapleoak]

Is it moral to feed a cow a banana?

 

[Dale_M]

Is it moral to feed a cow a banana?

I don’t know. I guess it wouldn’t hurt the cow, and at least one study suggests that green bananas added to the diet of cattle might be one way of increasing the productivity of poor quality pastureland.
springerlink.com/content/p45308337h420546/

But what it would boil down to is what benefits the economic growth of the area, and what provides the best nutrition to the people living there.

Ethanol from corn is a mixed blessing. In the U.S. it helps soak up some of our excess grain, which we have traditionally dumped on poor nations. This form of food aid is good for the U.S. but destroys the economy of farms in nations receiving the very low cost grain. Making ethanol from the excess corn would be a good thing if it weaned the U.S. away from in-kind food aid.

But Kathleen makes a good point that if the developed nations start bidding on poor nation’s food crop, then food there is likely to be priced out of the market for the majority of the population. This could be very bad for less developed nations and the majority of people who live there.

Hmmmm…I think I need to know more about the economic impact on poorer nations before I can work through the morality of corn based ethanol.

 

[mapleoak]

I don’t know. I guess it wouldn’t hurt the cow, and at least one study suggests that green bananas added to the diet of cattle might be one way of increasing the productivity of poor quality pastureland.
springerlink.com/content/p45308337h420546/

I ate a banana today. I also fed one of my dairy goats (Leenie) a banana. Having a herd of over 100 such animals, I couldn’t afford to feed them all such a sumptious ration. Surely I didn’t need to eat a banana today nor did I need to give Leenie a banana other than that it made her happy and content. Of course happy animals give more milk. I suppose I could have purchased two less bananas and the poor would have had something to eat.

 

[seekerz]

you did not post the obvious choice: I think it is immoral to divert food product to fuel production

the fact that people and nations who already consume (largely through waste) the larger part of the world’s food supply, now intend to get rich by diverting food production to provide even more fuel for gas-guzzling ineffecient transportation systems says even more about human greed and exploitation than the notion that the UN should enforce population control on the poor so there will be more resources available for the rich.

 

[KathleenElsie]

My original post was asked in a serious manner.It was not in jest. I am asking the moderators to please close this thread. Feeding people in a fair and affordable manner is not a choice it is the moral thing to do in my opinion. As a child and pre-teen we had very little and I saw my mother go without a meal so we three children could eat. Not because there was no food but because the price was out of reach for her. So for me this hits home and I Pray hunger never does come to your door because it is not in your budget.

God Bless you all.

 

[Leopard]

My original post was asked in a serious manner.It was not in jest. I am asking the moderators to please close this thread…l.

With no disrespect intended, I think many of the dissenting opinions are also meant seriously, and I am asking the moderators not to close this discussion simply because the originator does not agree with the direction it has taken.

 

[mapleoak]

My original post was asked in a serious manner.It was not in jest.

With all due respect, the intent was not to poke fun, but to point out that there is a common misconception that if food for isn’t used purposes other than feed, there will be a surplus available which would feed the poor. Firstly, a farmer is not going to produce a crop just for the sake of having a pretty farm field. He needs to make money off of his land. He is going to grow and sell what is in demand. He will grow corn if it be profitable for him to do so. He will not foolishly grow more of a certain crop than what can be expunged at the end of the season when it would be wiser to use the surplus remaining field to grow other crops in order to take up the slack in demand.
The example was that if I didn’t consume the two bananas, who would be feeding the poor with them? The same people who would be giving all this surplus corn to the poor (where does all this zero profit, no incentive for the farmer to even produce it, corn coming from?) when it isn’t being processed in ethanol plants.

Feeding people in a fair and affordable manner is not a choice it is the moral thing to do in my opinion.

It IS both a choice and a moral thing to do. It is something that involves sacrifice, not profit motive. You cannot force a farmer to sacrifice his farm fields to feed the poor. Such sacrifice is independent of the demand to use feed for fuel.

 

[vern_humphrey]

We still feed animals food. So no it is not immoral to feed the animals that need food to survive also.

Why is it that some people try to go to feed animals as an equal to “feeding” cars? One is alive and requires food. The other is a machine and requires fuel and care but not food.

But that’s irrelevant – in both cases, the food is being converted to transportation – and at a much lower efficiency in the case of animal transportation.

Once again, people are hungry in this world not because there is a world-wide shortage of food, but because the food doesn’t reach them. One reason for this is lack of transportation – which could be alleviated by using surplus food for fuel.

Another is high cost - which could be alleviated by using surplus food for fuel.

A third reason is brutal, corrupt dictatorships and tribal warfare where starvation is used as a weapon.

 

[strngrnrth]

An oil field is no longer usable as farmland because it is so polluted. Oil drilling reduces food volume for that reason.
Coal mining involves cutting away mountains, turning potential farmland into wasteland for generations. Nuclear power requires many pollution-generating steps as well. All these reduce usability of land for food production.
Americans throw away gigantic volumes of food because we don’t know how to send it to those who need it most. Landfills are full of food here, rotting, mixing with chemicals, unusable. To increase food transportation while reducing pollution would increase the amount of food available to the hungry.
In some places almost everyone lives on or near a farm and yet most people are hungry. In the USA most people live far from farmland and have more food than they can handle. Exchange, trade and transportation make that difference in efficiency, IMHO. I wish we could include the world in this bouny, but generally distribution runs into problems caused by government policies and lack of roads and similar obstacles.

 

[mapleoak]

Ask the 30 or so that live at our place. They are not fed for the slaughter. But for their company.

Bet you didn’t know, you probably aren’t feeding them the same corn that you eat. You probably aren’t eating the same corn that gets processed into ethanol either.

 

[mapleoak]

An oil field is no longer usable as farmland because it is so polluted. Oil drilling reduces food volume for that reason.

This is insignificant as to the availability of field that is utilized for food.

Coal mining involves cutting away mountains, turning potential farmland into wasteland for generations. Nuclear power requires many pollution-generating steps as well. All these reduce usability of land for food production.

It is generally not land that would be used for growing food anyway. Further, the land is not even in demand for food production.

Americans throw away gigantic volumes of food because we don’t know how to send it to those who need it most.

It isn’t that we don’t know how, but that it costs someone money to grow, wharehouse, and then distribute for free. As far as individual americans throwing away food, their surplus extravagance is the cause of throwing away gigantic volumes, not that their waste would end up on someones table if there existed a means to distribute it.