[News] Fidel - 3 billion people condemned to death from hunger and thirst

[Anti-Imperialist News]

GRANMA
March 28, 2007

OFFICIAL TRANSLATION

Reflections  from the Commander-in-Chief

MORE THAN THREE BILLION PEOPLE IN THE WORLD  ARE BEING
CONDEMEND TO A PREMATURE DEATH FROM HUNGER AND THIRST.

It is  not an exaggeration; this is rather a conservative
figure. I have meditated  for quite a long time on that
after the meeting held by President Bush with  the US
automakers.

The sinister idea of turning foodstuffs into fuel was
definitely established as the economic strategy of the US
foreign policy  on Monday, March 26th last.

A wire service issued by the AP, a US  information agency
with world-wide coverage, literally  reads:

WASHINGTON (AP), March 26 - President Bush touted the
benefits  of "flexible fuel" vehicles running on ethanol
and biodiesel on  Monday, meeting with automakers to boost
support for his energy plans.  Bush said a commitment by
the leaders of the domestic auto industry  to double their
production of flex-fuel vehicles could help  motorists
shift away from gasoline and reduce the nation's reliance
on  imported oil.

"That's a major technological breakthrough for the
country," Bush said after inspecting three alternative
vehicles. If the  nation wants to reduce gasoline use, he
said "the consumer has got to be in  a position to make a
rational choice."

The president urged Congress to  "move expeditiously" on
legislation the administration recently proposed to
require the use of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels
by 2017 and seek  higher fuel economy standards for
automobiles.

Bush met with General  Motors Corp. chairman and chief
executive Rick Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. chief  executive
Alan Mulally and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group chief
  executive Tom LaSorda. They discussed support for
flex-fuel vehicles,  attempts to develop ethanol from
alternative sources like switchgrass and  wood chips and
the administration's proposal to reduce gas consumption by
20  percent in 10 years.

The discussions came amid rising gasoline prices.  The
latest Lundberg Survey found the nationwide average for
gasoline has  risen 6 cents per gallon in the past two
weeks to $2.61. I think that  reducing and recycling all
fuel and electricity operated engines is an urgent  and
elemental necessity of all humanity. The dilemma is not in
  the reduction of energy costs, but in the idea of turning
foodstuffs  into fuel.

Today we know with accurate precision that one ton of corn
  can only render as an average 413 liters of ethanol (109
gallons), a  figure that may vary according to the
latter's density. The average price  of corn in US ports
has reached 167 dollars per ton. The production of 35
billion gallons of ethanol requires 320 million tons of
corn. According to  FAO, US corn production in 2005
reached 280.2 million tons.

Even if  the President is speaking about producing fuel
out of switchgrass or wood  chips, any person could
understand that these phrases are far from realistic.
Listen well: 35 billion gallons, 35 followed by nine
zeros!

Beautiful  examples of the productivity of men per hectare
achieved by the experienced  and well organized US farmers
will come next: corn will be turned into  ethanol; corn
wastes will be turned into animal fodder, with a 26
percent of  proteins; cattle manure will be used as raw
material for the production of  gas. Of course, all of
this will happen after a great number of investments,
which could only be afforded by the most powerful
companies whose operations  are based on the consumption
of electricity and fuel. Let this formula be  applied to
the Third World countries, and the world will see how many
  hungry people on this planet will cease to consume corn.
What is worse,  let the poor countries receive some
financing to produce ethanol from corn  or any other
foodstuff and very soon not a single tree will be left
standing  to protect humanity from climate change.

Other rich countries have  planned to use not only corn
but also wheat, sunflower seeds, rapeseed and  other
foodstuffs to produce fuel. For Europeans, for example, it
would be a  good business to import the entire soybean
production of the world to reduce  the cost of fuel for
their automobiles and feed their animals with the  wastes
of that legume, which has a high content of all kinds of
essential amino acids.

In Cuba, alcohol was produced as a sugar cane  by-product,
after three extractions of sugarcane juice. Climate change
is  already affecting our sugar production. Severe
droughts alternate with record  rainfall values, which
hardly allow our country to produce any sugar during  a
period of 100 days with adequate yields during our very
mild winter. So,  in Cuba, we are either producing less
sugar per every ton of sugarcane, or  the number of tons
of cane per hectare has been reduced due to the long
lasting droughts in the plantation and harvest seasons.

I understand  that Venezuela would not export alcohol; it
will use it to improve the  environmental safety of its
own fuel. Therefore, despite the excellent  technology
designed by Brazil to produce alcohol, its use in Cuba to
produce  alcohol from sugarcane juice is nothing but a
dream, the ravings of those who  entertain such ideas. In
our country, the land which would otherwise be  devoted
solely to the production of alcohol could be better used
to produce  foodstuffs for the people and protect the
environment.

All countries  of the world without exception, whether
rich or poor, could save trillions of  dollars in
investments and fuel if they only replace all incandescent
bulbs  with fluorescent bulbs, which is what Cuba has done
in all the residential  areas of the country. This would
be a palliative that will enable us to cope  with climate
change without killing the poor people in this planet with
  hunger.

As can be seen, I am not using adjectives to describe
either  the system or those who have become the owners of
this world. That  task will be brilliantly accomplished by
the information experts, the  many honest socio-economic
and political scientists in this world  who continuously
delve into the present and the future of our species.  A
computer and the increasing number of Internet networks
will just  be enough to do that.

For the first time a truly globalized economy  exists and
a dominant power in the economic, political, and military
spheres  that is in no way similar to the ancient Rome
ruled by emperors. Some people  may wonder why I am
speaking about hunger and thirst. And I will  answer: this
is not about the other side of a coin, but of the many
different sides of quite another object, maybe a six-sided
dice or a  polyhedron which has many more sides.

This time I will quote an  official news agency, founded
in 1945, which is in general very familiar with  the
economic and social problems of the world: TELAM. It
literally  said:

"Within hardly 18 years, nearly 2 billion people will
inhabit countries and regions where water might seem a far
away memory.  Two thirds of the world population could
live in places where the lack  of water could bring about
social and economic tensions that could lead peoples to go
to war over the precious "blue gold".

In the course  of the last 100 years, water consumption
has grown at a pace which is more  than twice the
population growth rate.

"According to the World Water  Council (WWC), the number
of persons affected by this serious situation will
increase to 3.5 billion by the year 2015.

On March 23, the United  Nations Organization observed the
World Water Day, urging all member  countries to cope with
the international water shortage as of that day, under
the auspices of FAO, with the aim of emphasizing the
increasing importance of  water shortage in the world and
the need for greater integration and  cooperation to
ensure a sustainable and efficient management of water
resources.

"Many regions in this planet suffer from severe water
shortage, where the annual rate of cubic meters per person
is less than 500.  Every time there are more and more
regions suffering from a  chronic shortage of this vital
resource.

"An insufficient amount of  the precious fluid necessary
to produce foodstuffs, the impaired development  of
industry, urban areas and tourism, and the emergence of
health problems  are some of the consequences that derive
from water shortage." So much for  the TELAM wire service.

I have not mentioned other important facts,  such as the
ice that is melting down in Greenland and the Antartic,
the  damages caused to the ozone layer and the ever higher
titers of mercury found  in many fish species which are
part of the regular people's  diet.

Other topics could be addressed, but in these few lines I
simply intend to make some comments about the meeting held
by President  Bush with the chief executives of US
automakers.

March 28,  2007.

Fidel  Castro

The Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
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