A significant component of the 2008 food price spike has been thought to be biofuels, in particular corn ethanol. The spike temporarily vanished leading to arguments that futures trading speculation caused much of the rise, however the price rise has turned out to be persistent to this day
At the time I recall reading a paper that I thought was in the Lancet which estimated 20,000 to 200,000 deaths from ethanol mandates or subsidies. I'm unable to find this again. I think it was one or two years after the initial spike which pencils out to about 800,000 - 1.6 million as of the end of 2023, so my initial answer is 1.2 million
My reading of the wiki page on it is that 25-80% of the price rise has been attributed to biofuels. I can recall that I once read a rule of thumb for how much starvation an increase in food prices will cause but can't find it. The FAO real food price index rises from 73 in 2006 to 124 for 2023, and the average from 2008 to 2023 works out to 110
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@Canucklug
What is your source or sources to use?
What is needed to provide proof?
How can you be subjective if data is provided showing facts?
@SirCryptomind I haven't been able to find the paper I remember or specific numbers other than various sources on the percentage of the price rise attributed to biofuel on the wikipedia page
Since I've had trouble with this I will base on comments here and look at their sources. Currently the only thing I can think of otherwise is to look up some kind of literature review and try to find a reference to how much a certain rise in price causes starvation and then apply that to the average of the attributed price rise
Is it possible to resolve this N/A and simply re-ask the question and state that I will resolve to the most popular answer? I think I didn't understand that the resolution doesn't have to depend on my opinion of the comments/betting weights
@Canucklug Yea you should N/A and re-ask it differently and with sources and how youll determine proof.
Base it off of facts, not your opinion.
@SirCryptomind it is not really possible to precisely attribute starvation deaths to biofuels, this was perfectly fine as a subjective question. Any "fact-based" answer is bound to be a fairly uncertain probability estimate. Heck, the sign of the answer is uncertain.
@BrunoParga This is a good question. Without subsidies resources used to make biofuels might still be found to get a better price for fuel than for food, to some lesser extent. I think it significantly complicates the question to predict how much biofuels would be in use without subsidies and then how much the subsidized use of biofuels has affected starvation so I would choose biofuels in total
@Canucklug you should very much specify which biofuels you're talking about, because the ratio of energy input to output varies wildly. Sugarcane ethanol is very economically efficient.
@Canucklug then there are several other higher-order effects. It could in principle be that widespread use of biofuels reduces the demand for fossil fuels, rendering them cheaper for the production of fertilizers, which renders them cheaper, which renders the food produced with them cheaper. I think it is very unlikely that all of the supply and demand curves have the exactly precise shape required for this to be true, but it's not something that one can a priori rule out, you see?
@BrunoParga I agree this is a possibility. I think the starvation potentially prevented by biofuels is sure enough to be less than caused by it - this means that a starvation deaths avoided effect will reduce my judgement on starvation caused on net but I expect it will still be positive. If I am convinced that overall starvation is reduced by biofuels the answer zero will be correct relating to the question of how many are caused
So I do note that my answer is a net effect one and second order effects can in theory drive my resolution to zero, as well as potentially higher based on some effect I can't think of off the cuff