Mr. Speaker, I want to make two points. The first point is that I agree with the member from the New Democratic Party when he said in his speech that biofuels are not the only reason for the rise in world food prices. I think it is important to acknowledge that. There have been significant droughts around the world in the last number of years that have seriously curtailed some of major wheat exporting countries' ability to produce wheat.
The ever changing diets and ever growing populations in the developing world are causing a much increased demand for wheat, soybeans and corn. For example, every pound of meat requires seven pounds of input, such as corn, wheat or soybeans. As the diets in the third world and the developing world change and an ever increasing demand for meat takes place, the demand for these crops increases as well.
The third reason that needs to be taken into account is that energy prices have been increasing in general. Energy costs are a significant portion of the agricultural inputs.
It is commendable that the member mentioned these three other major factors which have contributed to the rising price of food.
The second point I want to make is to address the concern of many who say that biofuels require more energy than they produce. That may very well be the case, but so do solar power and wind energy. One can make the case that solar power and wind energy in past years required more energy than they produced.
The reason that incentives and subsidies have been put in place is to do two things: first of all, to ramp up the economies of scale, so that the cost per unit of production goes down; and second, to provide for greater research and development so that we can get cheaper products, cheaper energy out of these various sources of energy.
While today certain biofuels may in fact require more energy than they produce, the whole idea here is to provide the incentives and the subsidies so that at some future date research and development along with economies of scale will drive down the price and also the carbon footprints so that these in fact will become carbon positive.