Food or Fuel ?
| Food or Fuel ? |
| Tuesday, 19 August 2008 23:37 |
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As mentioned before, the production of agrofuels has potentially far-reaching social and environmental impacts, and raises urgent questions about whether they are an effective or economical way of helping to combat climate change. Agrofuels production has increased in recent years. Some commodities like maize can be used as a food crop or energy crop. With global demand for biofuels on the increase due to the oil price increases taking place in recent months, there is also fear of the potential destruction of natural habitats. The economic incentive to grow crops for fuels instead of food will drive down food production in the long run, permanently inflating the cost of food. At the same time, less food will be produced. This combination creates a situation, where landowners motivated by profits to grow fuel crops, will lead to an increase in the number of hungry people in poor countries. Most agricultural land is already used to grow food, animal feed, fibre and numerous other products. The growing demand for biomass for agrofuels is leading to significant pressures in agricultural areas, which particularly for marginalized groups leads to competition with food supply. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns that “Traditional food and fibre use of land may lose out in this competition simply because, on the margin, the potential market for energy is huge in relation to that for food, eventually leading to rising food prices. The latter may not dent the welfare of those who can afford to pay higher prices for both food and fuel, including the population groups that benefit from the development of biofuels. However, low income consumers that do not participate in such gains may be adversely affected in their access to food.†In many of the poorer ‘Southern’ countries, people have little access to land. Expansion of the area used to export agrofuels crops will likely worsen this situation. The sheer quantity of land needed to produce agrofuels on a large scale may also lead to conflicts with food supply and peoples’ access. The United Nations warns that the “transition to liquid biofuels can be especially harmful to farmers who do not own their own land, and to the rural and urban poor who are net buyers of food…this is one of the most significant threats associated with liquid biofuel development and calls for careful consideration by decision-makers.†The world stocks of grain are at their lowest for 30 years, with currently enough surpluses to feed the world’s population for 45 days (116 days in 1999). This drop in grain stocks is already provoking price rises and impacting on low-income countries. There is a real danger that diverting agricultural land into agrofuels production will worsen the situation and is likely to compromise the UN Millennium Development Goal to eradicate extreme hunger by 2015. Proponents of genetic engineering are also promoting agrofuels in an attempt to break worldwide opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods, even though current GM crops provide no advantage when producing agrofuels. The first priority in securing energy supplies should be reducing demand and improving efficiency. Agreeing to targets to increase the amount of agrofuels in petrol or diesel, without curtailing the growth in transport, will mean that we will still need the same level of mineral fuels in the near future with all the insecurities and social and environmental problems these bring. |
