Thoughts on the Alternative to Oil Based Products Raising Food Prices

With the oil prices skyrocketing, the industries that normally use petroleum products are trying to find new ways of producing the same product with out petroleum products which is compounding another problem that already exists. This is the food shortage in some areas of the world which has been growing worse on its own through environmental factors and a growing population requiring larger amounts of food to be grown, with the industries that normally use petroleum products looking for alternatives they have found one alternative but it is causing the food shortage to grow faster than it was before.

No one seems to agree what to do to produce the needed amounts of grain that are needed for the growing world populations or for the new industries vying for those same grains to produce non food products based from the individual components of the grains.

Everyone that has done research seems to agree at least in part that we may end up having to use the deserts of the world for farming sometime in the next few generations but I haven't heard of anyone taking the time to actually see what can be done now to start farming the deserts in an attempt to deal with both the growing population and the new demands placed on farms to produce crops for non food related products.

I know that it would not be cheap to farm in the deserts due to the fact that the farmers would need really large amounts of water to maintain their crops, which would mean that the water would have to come from desalinating ocean water so drinking water would not be taken away from the world's population. The desalinization process itself is a costly adventure due to the energy costs that are associated with it at least when it comes to the traditional ways of producing the energy for the desalinization process.

We as the caretakers of the world have advanced far enough with trying to produce energy without the use of fossil fuels and with using renewable and green fuels. We have found that we can use both the sun and the water to create power instead of using fossil fuels but we are somewhat limited in how well we can use them due to our technology. We also tend to limit ourselves in regards to what we think can be done.

We know how to produce siphons, but I have not heard of anyone even attempting to use a siphon as a sustainable power source. What is actually stopping someone from designing a water turbine to be attached to the outtake of a siphon to create power?