Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
I have a new paper — Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? — which suggests that global warming policies may be helping kill more people than it saves. It was published last month in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Access to the paper is free.
Part of the PR notice put out by the journal is reproduced below:
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Biofuels Policy May Kill 200,000 Per Year in the Third World
TUCSON, Ariz., March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. and European policy to increase production of ethanol and other biofuels to displace fossil fuels is supposed to help human health by reducing “global warming.” Instead it has added to the global burden of death and disease.
Increased production of biofuels increases the price of food worldwide by diverting crops and cropland from feeding people to feeding motor vehicles. Higher food prices, in turn, condemn more people to chronic hunger and “absolute poverty” (defined as income less than $1.25 per day). But hunger and poverty are leading causes of premature death and excess disease worldwide. Therefore, higher biofuel production would increase death and disease.
Research by the World Bank indicates that the increase in biofuels production over 2004 levels would push more than 35 million additional people into absolute poverty in 2010 in developing countries. Using statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Indur Goklany estimates that this would lead to at least 192,000 excess deaths per year, plus disease resulting in the loss of 6.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per year. These exceed the estimated annual toll of 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million lost DALYs that the World Health Organization attributes to global warming. Thus, developed world policies intended to mitigate global warming probably have increased death and disease in developing countries rather than reducing them. Goklany also notes that death and disease from poverty are a fact, whereas death and disease from global warming are hypothetical.
Thus, the biofuel remedy for global warming may be worse than the disease it purports to alleviate.
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The paper also shows that based on the World Health Organization’s latest estimates of death and disease from global warming and 23 other global health risk factors (for the year 2004), global warming should be ranked last or second last, depending on whether the criterion used is the burden of disease or death.
Policies that subsidize or mandate biofuels benefit neither Mother Earth nor humanity.
philincalifornia says:
April 20, 2011 at 3:38 pm
“Not sure about biodiesel. I’d like to see Robert E answer that one.”
Crickets… Looks like he just dropped a baseless assertion. Thought so.
KD
I have some suggestions for you
1. Ask yourself, why, in 100 years America now has a epidemic of obese malnourished poeple
2. google Weston Price and really read their research
3. You continue to eat it, I will continuie to avoid it.
On topic, thanks to the posters who pointed out the food byproducts and labour and income generated by biofuels. I am disappointed that nobody picked up on the phoney pricing, economics.
Its so simple, Its the Policy not the biofuels.
One reason that corn, even dent, is used as a biofuel in the USA, is that it is a key to getting global price control of food in the same way that oil prices are. Think about that.
Maybe, biofuels is the only use dent should be put to, smile
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 21, 2011 at 3:45 am
“So unless it’s local production, and very local given the transport infrastructure, corn used for biofuels is corn that’s not available for feeding Africans.”
Ofcourse not. Just as the soybean meal and steam-flaked corn which the DDGS replaces would not be available for feeding africans.
That being said, if the presence of a new market for starch justifies investment in high-yielding, high-efficiencybut low-margin corn acres, those same africans should in fact benefit by decreased competition for the current supply of commodity grain.
Again, ALL grain processed for ethanol produces a high-protein, high-energy co-product. This product displaces higher-cost protein source such as soybeans. These soybean acres is where the new corn production comes from. Soybeans can not physiologically yield much more than 6000 lbs per acre at 40% protein. Average u.s. yield is around 2,500 lbs/acre (1000 lbs protein). Marginal yields are below 20 bpa or 1200lbs (480 lbs). Corn averages 160 bpa at 10%+ protein (900lbs protein) and on high-performing farms is pushing an average 300 bpa (1600 lbs protein) as the new normal. The important number to look for is when marginal corn protein yield per acre exceeds potential value-added soybean protein yield from any one marginal acre. Only if this competition for acreage results in less feed protein can one say that diversion to biofuels has resulted in a sum zero loss for those poor african babies.
Considering even cellulosic ethanol produces large amounts of high-quality feed protein in the form of yeast biomass (made from glucose + nitrogen supplements) the prospects for a net reduction in protein seems unlikely. Furthermore, advanced biorefinery processes (dry fractionation and combined-cycle solvent extraction technologies) on the current industry roadmap will improve the biological value of corn protein (zein isolate) to help with the spread between corn and soya protein quality.
“DDGS has an almost indefinite shelf life but the drying consumes much energy, this source places it at more than 40% of the alcohol plant’s energy costs.”
That energy is properly assigned to the value of the processed feed. Large amounts of energy are invested in increasing the biological value of feeds through grinding and cooking. Roasted beans, boiled soybeans, solvent-extracted soybean meal, dry-rolled corn, steam-flaked corn, etc. all require large amounts of machinery and fuel. This investment is made when the costs of processing is less than the cost of purchasing more raw feedstuffs.
John Galt … don’t forget that more and more of the energy to do all that drying, rolling, milling, grinding etc is heading more and more to being provided by the very product being created … and additional energy is coming from the resultant waste product the biomass remaining after processing
I don’t remember if we’ve heard the water scaremongering in this thread or not but that is yet another largely false statement.
Yes water IS used to produce ethanol from corn, what seems like a huge number … in reality – and this is from memory from old research I did – a 50 million gal ethanol plant used the equivalent water to a handful of golf courses, or car washes … and like each of those, the ethanol industry has dramatically reduced water use by onsite treatment and reuse of waste water … another red herring especially when compared to water use of fossil fuel based fuel production ….
50 million gal per year standard ethanol plant uses appx 400,000 gal per day (150 mgpyr) (appx 3 gal per gal ethanol)
Petroleum refining uses appx 65 to 90 gals water per barrel of crude – each barrel makes appx 20 gals gasoline or 3.25 to 4.5 gals water per gal gasoline
Cellulosic processes use as little as 1.9 gal water per gal ethanol …
Water use will continue to improive … Poet used appx 3 gal per gal ethanol in 2009, an 80% decrease from 1988 and expect to further reduce water usage to 2.3 gal per gal ethanol over next 5 years.
NPR: Audubon International estimates that the average American course uses 312,000 gallons per day. In a place like Palm Springs, where 57 golf courses challenge the desert, each course eats up a million gallons a day.
A large 150 million gallon per year corn ethanol plant will use appx 1.2 million gallons per day of water (although this is greatly reduced thru treatments and recycling) … about the same as one large golf course in Palm Springs or 4 average American golf courses.
That SINGLE 150 mgpy ethanol plant – assuming 15mpg avg fuel economy – provides enough fuel to provide the entire annual fuel needs for 1,000 cars driving avg 10,000 miles per year.
The best misinfo relating to water use is the amount of rain falling on an acre of corn. That always makes me chuckle.
The consumption if water in biorefineries needs to be defined better. Just because a process “uses” a certain amount of water doesn’t mean that the water is “used up.” Water is recycled as backstock. If 30 gallons is used to process a bushel of corn in a fermenter, only the first batch “uses” 30 gallons. Each additional batch recycles 15 gallons. The other 15 gallons ends up as condensed syrup feeds and hot, distilled steam vapor in the DDGS processing stage. If any one single ethanol plant doesn’t capture that hot, sterilized, distilled water vapor then that is a problem with that single plant, not “corn ethanol.”
Integrated co-located, co-generating and co-production plants will use manure water as a water (and nutrient) source, sterilize it during the feedstock cooking stage, and feed the cleaned, nutrient rich co-product liquids back to livestock.
Indur M. Goklany says:
April 20, 2011 at 7:41 pm
John Q. Galt:
I am not an agronomist. And yes, I am aware that byproducts of ethanol production have value, and that soybean oil can be (and is) converted to fuel. However, that doesn’t mean that biofuel production does not increase food prices.
I presume you know that soybean oil is edible and used in a variety of edible products, as well as for cooking. It is also used for feed, but (much of) feed eventually ends up (indirectly) as food.
Regardless, the real problem is that if biofuel production were economic then it would not need to rely on subsidies, tariffs and mandates to be sustained in the market place. And I would quit complaining about it.
Ah, so you’re a free market libertarian then. /sarc
Great way to say you don’t know what you’re writing about but here’s my paper any way. Like most academics you start with a money quote (“Policies that subsidize or mandate biofuels benefit neither Mother Earth nor humanity”) and then work back from there as you rearrange some ad hoc numbers that appeal to the current narrative.
From Grey lensman on April 21, 2011 at 7:22 pm:
I’m trying to decide if you are stupid, deliberately dense, or so consumed with promoting an agenda you’re going to keep tossing out similar nonsensical one-liners no matter what I write.
The problem is not the food source you have unfairly demonized, dent corn.
The problem is not the millenia-old processing method of nixtamalization, whether it is done by individuals or in factories. Indeed, I first learned of it while reading Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native Americans, available on the Weston A. Price Foundation website.
The problem is eating too much of an unbalanced diet. The actual foods don’t matter. You can have a diet of squash and carrots right from your own organic garden, cooked and served with butter you churned yourself from raw milk, and if you eat too much of it you’ll still be obese and malnourished.
It’s easy to blame the cheap highly-processed low-nutrition foods, especially since in those “100 years” food, including that low-nutrition stuff, has grown much cheaper thus it’s grown much easier to consume too much. Why not blame the innumerable bags of cheese puffs or potato chips? But make the same thing at home, starting with the healthiest ingredients you can find, then consume too much of them in an unbalanced diet, you end up at up the same place you’d be if you had consumed the cheap mass-produced versions instead. Getting people to actually think about nutrition and eat healthy nutrient-dense foods, that’s hard. It’s much easier to blame the processing.
Blaming dent corn, a nutritious food, rather than address the unhealthy eating habits that are endemic, is just you being lazy. Blaming modern processing, which has provided us with a plethora of safe food with long storage times, without addressing the need to still select for complete nutrition and not consume too much, really ain’t much better.
kadaka, isn’t it funny corn is blamed for the worlds ills because it is both too cheap and too expensive? Haha!
My previous post concerning the relationship between corn and soybeans really should have included a note about corn’s value relative to wheat, sorghum, rice, potatoes, sugar beets and other starchy crops. A comparison of costs-benefits is even more obvious with these crops.
Here’s a new article on the feed value of ethanol co-products.
http://advancedbiofuelsusa.info/fuel-and-animal-feed-both-produced-from-advanced-biofuel-biomass-the-new-biofuel-paradigm
Despite the title, this isn’t a new thing, just a “new to you” thing.
Beside water concerns, does anyone have an up-to-date energy budget for the production of ethanol from biofuels? As I recall from work done in the ’70s when the relative cost of fossil fuels was very high and supply was under threat, the separation of water from ethanol is a very energy-intensive process that renders the whole process a net energy loss. Is this true? And the separation of water is very expensive which is why vodka and gin, even the cheapest, is much more expensive than fuel.
I do know that in the 70s ethanol production dropped once the price of fossil fuel dropped. Many plants converted to other uses.
I would also point out that the production of brewing wastes is not cost-free. The proper way to handle revenue generating products is to apportion costs appropriately between products.
But I do like the idea of exhorting my mates to drink more for the environment’s sake because at present the amount of fermentable industrial wastes is nowhere near sufficient to be a major source of fuels. We would be better burning them as fuel for a modern Stirling engine.
We are concentrating on producing biofuels in marginal and non-cultivated land rather than converting food-producing land to the production of biofuels (which I think is morally repugnant). And we are investigating producing other fuels than ethanol which we think is the worst choice possible! Too polar, miscibility range with hydrocarbons far too limited, hard to separate etc.
I should have also included this link, just so nobody misses it in the above linked article.
http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/power-and-energy/5713-ethanols-overlooked-source-of-food-supply.html
John Q. Galt says:
April 22, 2011 at 8:48 pm
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Thanks for the link. Yes, nothing new really, but summarized very well (saved me a lot of time tracking down all those numbers).
The basic equation continues to be:
Light + water + CO2 –> Moving vehicle + water + CO2
Any element other than C, H, O is just along for the ride, in both the biomass and the yeast – nitrogen, sulfur, trace metals, salts etc. Well, as components of enzymes, facilitating the ride but, within the whole cellulosic process also involved in converting inedible protein to edible protein during the ride.
Do you have a reference for the following (pretty please):
“Integrated co-located, co-generating and co-production plants will use manure water as a water (and nutrient) source, sterilize it during the feedstock cooking stage, and feed the cleaned, nutrient rich co-product liquids back to livestock.” ??
Orchestia …
Unless you read and believe the repeatedly refuted work of outliers Pimental and Patzek – who are almost the only people claiming a net energy loss – and who not surprisingly are the references Dr. Goklany includes in his paper …. ethanol production from corn has had a positive net energy balance for a long time.
Current numbers run from appx 1.3 to appx 1.8 to 1 for current corn ethanol production – meaning 1.3 to 1.8 BTU units of energy are produced from every 1 BTU expended in production. In 2001 USDA found an avg net energy balance of appx 1.7 based on a 19 state study.
This number continues to grow, but it is the newer cellulosic processes that are the future of ethanol.
Using switch grass, corn stalks, tree fiber and similar as feedstock, cellulosic production provides a net energy balance that starts around 3 to 1 … typical current avergaes are in the 5 to 1 to 8 to 1 range. Improvements in process, feedstocks etc show promise of energy balance of over 20 to 1 possible.
The feedstock for cellulosic ethanol is grown typically on marginal land with minimal cultivation and irrigation. Feedstocks like switchgrass can provide addtl side benefits – making good wildlife habitat and a restorative nature to soil.
At the end of the day corn ethanol provides a valuable part of our renewable energy needs. It is not a solution nor was it ever expected to be, but it does put a significant dent in our foreign fossil fuel needs
From 220mph on April 23, 2011 at 2:49 am:
This was shown on a local news station:
Switch Grass Saves School District Money
By Ryan Coyle
7:06 p.m. EDT, March 17, 2011
Excerpt:
As described, switch grass “has the potential to return the most energy savings”. And even then, it’ll take 13 years to hit payback, and that’s with figuring in the rising price of heating oil.
With simple burning, the payback time is large. You are pulling out these fantastic numbers for “energy balance” to support how great it’ll be to use more energy to convert switch grass to ethanol, when using switch grass without that additional energy input still doesn’t look that great.
Meanwhile, to consider alternative energy worth pursuing, there are geothermal heat pumps. By the information congealed on Wikipedia, in the US for residential heating the payback period is just 5 years when replacing heating oil, with a note saying government subsidies were not included (see chart). “The payback period for larger commercial systems in the USA is 1–5 years, even when compared to natural gas.”
http://www.earthrivergeo.com/
“Geothermal pumps return up to $5 worth of heat for every $1 spent on electricity.”
http://www.precisionairtn.com/reports/26161a.pdf
1998 US Department of Energy report, Office of Geothermal Technologies
“Nearly 500 schools nationwide have installed geothermal heat pump systems to provide their heating and cooling needs.”
Payback in 2-8 years, at 1998 energy prices.
Getting the most energy possible out of switch grass by simply burning it efficiently, the payback period is many times that of a geothermal heat pump system. If you think that switch grass to ethanol would be such a wonderful thing, then perhaps you’d support the far greater potential benefits of geothermal to ethanol. ☺
kadaka …
What a sill and meaningless comment – on many levels …
1. Your own article clearly stated the district would save money using switchgrass.
2. A 13 year payback is quite respectable.
3. Your other geothermal “payback” was based on 1998 energy prices – not the extremely higher current prices
4. It was nice that you picked payback vs replacing heating oil system – which is claimed at 5 years … however, you conveniently avoided the payback for natural gas systems – the prevalent systems in US – which is 12 years
All of that is irrelevant regardless … trying to compare cellulosic ethanol to burning switchgrass is just plain ridiculous – there is nothing remotely in common.
Interestingly however you DO does point out and confirm yet another benefit of cellulosic (and corn) ethanol production … after extracting the ethanol, distillers dried grains and corn oil in case of corn, and other valuable byproducts the remaining waste product can be BURNED to create heat and energy
Patzek & Pimental debunked
Shows their findings in perspective to many other studies
http://www.pacificethanol.net/site/_images/media_photos/energy_balance_chart.gif
Patzek & Pimental debunked
Shows their findings in graphic perspective to many other studies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2206559/
Published paper Schmer 2008 … Net Energy Cellulosic from Switchgrass
Average estimated Net Energy yield 5.43 – 1 over 10 test parcels … based on 2001 data … current yields have continued to increase … in initial analysis switchgrass was appx 3.43 to 1 net energy balance – 2008 estimated potential 7 to 1
GHG emissions 94% less than gasoline
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2206559/
philincalifornia says:
April 22, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Do you have a reference for the following (pretty please):
“Integrated co-located, co-generating and co-production plants will use manure water as a water (and nutrient) source, sterilize it during the feedstock cooking stage, and feed the cleaned, nutrient rich co-product liquids back to livestock.” ??
No link as such. The use of waste flows is pretty straightforward. Manure water (wash water from livestock pens and manure lagoons) can be sterilized during the cooking process or even during a biomass-fired open-cycle steam generating process.
Orchestia says:
April 22, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Beside water concerns, does anyone have an up-to-date energy budget for the production of ethanol from biofuels? As I recall from work done in the ’70s when the relative cost of fossil fuels was very high and supply was under threat, the separation of water from ethanol is a very energy-intensive process that renders the whole process a net energy loss. Is this true?
State-of-the-art roadmaps involve the use of membrane filters, not distillation columns. Even so, the energy used for the ethanol production process is less than 20K btu.
A personal design for a product recovery process combines distillation, feedstock and product cold storage, and fermenter cooling systems, with an air cycle vapor compression system and frozen grain as a condenser medium. Ethanol is then freeze-dried out over time.
I would also point out that the production of brewing wastes is not cost-free. The proper way to handle revenue generating products is to apportion costs appropriately between products.
If you have beed following the discussion you will have learned that the costs are being apportioned to the value of each co-product produced. The problem with the non-expert critics is that they do not properly apportion costs.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
April 23, 2011 at 7:15 am
Getting the most energy possible out of switch grass by simply burning it efficiently, the payback period is many times that of a geothermal heat pump system. If you think that switch grass to ethanol would be such a wonderful thing, then perhaps you’d support the far greater potential benefits of geothermal to ethanol. ☺
kadaka, your argument is comparing apples to oranges.
1) The energy needed to run the heat pumps needs to come from some primary mover. Heat pumps don’t replace fuel sources but merely reduce the fuel required to do some desired work.
2) Geothermal to ethanol?
A general comment about EROEI. All energy balance studies assume all energy sources to be the same. They are not. A btu of coal can not be compared to a btu of finished retail gasolines or any other liquid fuel. Energy inputs should be classified as fossil fuels and refined fossil fuel products. Only the potential refined motor fuels should be considered when calculating the value of ethanol as a motor fuel. Ethanol’s value is greater than it’s btu content. Ethanol is a fuel additive which increases the octane value of low-octane, high-btu heavy gasolines thus increasing the total amount of gasoline that can be sold on the market at the varios octane rating.
From 220mph on April 23, 2011 at 2:00 pm:
But they could likewise save by switching to natural gas, they also could save much more with geothermal.
Not really. Especially when commercial-scale geothermal can achieve payback about ten years sooner.
Bingo. Fuel oil has gotten more expensive, as technology has improved the current geothermal systems should have even greater efficiency, thus the payback period should be shorter.
Switch grass replacing heating oil was the example. The much longer payback when replacing natural gas with geothermal indicates how cheap an energy source natural gas is, note how in Germany geothermal is actually more expensive than natural gas. Using those numbers for a multiplier, we get: 12/5 * 13 yrs = 31 yrs. If that switch grass system was replacing natural gas, that’d in theory be 31 yrs to payback. “In theory” comes about since the grass-burning boiler will likely need major repairs or replacement before that time.
Got that right. Switch grass is cited as just about the most promising biofuel, due to it being “low input” and grown on marginal land, etc. Using it in the most efficient way possible, burning it efficiently to nearly nothing, it can roughly compete with natural gas and gets blown away by geothermal.
For cellulosic ethanol, you’re using more energy with further processing and adding even more energy to get the ethanol, than simply burning it. Thus clearly the switch grass is being used far from the most efficient manner possible. You’re not going to make up the difference by burning the residue, and it seems highly unlikely that selling off the residue as animal feed will make it worthwhile.
If you want to displace fossil liquid fuels, forget biofuels. Change over homes from using #2 heating oil to using geothermal, the stock that would have been #2 heating oil can easily be diesel instead, and have more vehicles using the more-efficient diesel engines instead of gasoline. That makes better economic sense overall than playing around with biofuels.
kadaka …. burning switch grass is the “most efficient” way to use it?
Not even remotely accurate – just one miscellaneous comment:
“Most plans for cellulosic ethanol processing call for burning the lignin to generate steam and heat to run the process. As a fuel, lignin is worth around $40 a ton.”
another:
“Lignin and protein, two important co-products, have the potential to significantly improve the economics of biorefineries. Lignin is a non-fermentable residue from the hydrolysis process. It has an energy content similar to coal and is employed to power the operation, thereby reducing production costs. “There is enough residue [lignin] left over to meet the energy needs of the process plus make additional ethanol or electricity,” says Eric Larson, a research engineer at the Princeton Environmental Institute.”
The same story talks about a process to use that lignin in a glue product that would be worth as much s $300/ton
The byproduct can still be burned as fuel, in addition to the ethanol – which is produced at a net energy balance somewhere in the 5 to 7 to 1 range.
Your comments seem to make little sense – trying to compare geothermal to ethanol is as noted wholly unrelated.
Thanks to those who replied to my earlier post, but just to clarify matters did you take into account the energy costs in growing the crops?
I still have hopes for solar cells as the amount of solar energy impinging on earth is vast and only a tiny fraction is used in photosynthesis and this technology is C-free, so the potential is excellent.
But as I understand it the manufacturing and operating costs are still such that the production costs are still non-competitive. But I believe Bill Chan (California) thinks he has “cracked it” (free plug). His system is scalable and can be installed at the household, village or town scale.
As for crops, I am very suspicious of corn as a biofuel as it requires high quality land in order to grow and high fertilization rates. Its cultivation is heavily subsidized in many countries so these subsidies should be taken into account as a cost.
As for sources, forestry wastes are very promising, and some research is investigating reducing carbon emissions. But for economics perennials such as saafa grass, Miscanthas and Jerusalem artichokes take some beating, especially the latter as their tubers can be used for food and industrial processes while the tops can be used as stock food or biofuels. We got 8 tonnes (ww) ph in previously uncropped marginal lands that are semi-arid and cold, and 50 to 100 tonnes p h in better land (but which still does not give economic corn crops). For sugar production they are about 50% greater than tropical cane sugar.
So we believe a multicropping system using one or other of these plants grown on marginal land offers much more than adaptation of food crops and using cropping land in competition with food crops.
And in any consideration of food production don’t forget stock food. This is rocketing up in price due (probably) to a combination of adverse environmental events (Australia), denial of supply (Malaysia) and competition with biofuels is causing price increases worldwide with a concomitant increase in food prices for commodities dependent on animal supplements, including fish farming.
Orchestia … yes the net energy balance studies take into account growing the crops … that said the argument is food vs fuel – which makes that question moot – the crops are going to be grown regardless
Cellulosic ethanol processes use marginal land to grow feedstocks that are wholly unrelated to food or animal feed – the process does not take land or resources away from nor compete with food crops. It also has a much higher net energy balance – as high as 8 units produced vs 1 unit expended in production.
Last – your comment on “stock food” I assume means animal feed … corn ethanol is produced from FEED corn – corn grown for purpose of feeding livestock – NOT corn grown as food. And after ethanol is extracted from the corn a large amount of distillers dried grain solids are created as a byproduct. These DDGs are high quality animal feed that replaces the orig corn used as feed
Dr. Goklany hasn’t responded to the specific questions about data and calcs in his paper, other than in generalities, but regardless I’ll continue my review anyway.
I went and read the De Hoyos and Medvedev (DHM) paper used as the cire basis for Goklany’s paper. What I found was quite interesting.
First the DHW paper is based on a model – the World Bank’s GIDD model and dataset:
The simulations presented here make use of the Global Income Distribution Dynamic GIDD dataset consists of 73 detailed household surveys for low and middle income countries, 21 of which include information on food expenditure by household. Most of the household surveys in the GIDD are for years between 2000 and 2005.
Dr. Golkany’s claims – that he needed to increase the DHW numbers by 14% because the DHW study did not cover as much of the world population as the World Bank numbers is disproven in the DHW report.
First – the DHW paper appears it notes it has already been adjusted to reflect the latest extreme poverty headcount from World Bank.
When the GIDD dataset did not include the newest household survey available from the World Bank’s PovCal, the GIDD’s survey mean income (or consumption) was modified so that the extreme poverty headcount matched the latest information available from PovCal.
As importantly is a review of the data on countries covered by the DHW paper.
Recall again Dr. Golkany’s claim that the DHW papers conclusion that the poverty headcount increased by 32 million, allegedly due to increased biofuel production, needed to be increased 14% because of the alleged difference in country/population coverage compared to World Bank study…
A review of the data in DHW paper shows that 32 million claim is almost entirely based on South Asia’s numbers. South Asia actually had 32.5 million increased poverty headcount which was slightly reduced – offset by DECREASING poverty headcount in other countries:
This increase is determined entirely by South Asia, where an additional 32.5 million people slip into extreme poverty due to higher food prices brought about by increased production of biofuels. South Asia followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, where extreme poverty rises by 1.8 million. On the other hand, the number of poor is reduced significantly in Latin America, where higher farm incomes contribute to an exit of 2.3 million people out of extreme poverty. Overall, extreme poverty rises by 32 million people; while a large number, this is only one-fifth of the near-term increase in the number of poor shown in the previous section.
So how much of South Asia was covered in the DHW study? Lets look – ANNEX III Table 9 on pg 28 shows the DHW paper covers 98.12% of the South Asia population in this study. To put another way the country that makes up virtually all of the net increase has the largest increae.
South Asia 1,332,800 1,358,294 98.12% of population covered
And from a world perspective – the DHW paper covers 90.48% of World population.
World 5,498,162 6,076,509 90.48% of World population covered.
Dr. Golkany claimed he needed to increase the DHW numbers by 14% because the DHW study and World Bank’s numbers did not match.
We know from the DHW paper the GIDD model and dataset used as basis for DHW paper are actually World Bank numbers. Which have already been adjusted upwards to insure the DHW numbers match the World Bank data. We further know from the DHW paper that essentially all of the 32 million increase in poverty headcount allegedly due to increased biofuels is attributed to South Asia and that South Asia had 98+% data coverage.
Regardless of the above – the OVERALL data coverage worldwide is 90%+
There is simply no basis I can see for Dr. Golkany to increase the number by 14%. The area responsible for essentially the entire 32 million poverty headcount increase is 98.12% covered under the data set used.
And absent the 14% increase the already tenuous conclusions of this paper are all but erased.