The United Nations has raised a key question about the use of biofuels as substitutes for petroleum products. In August, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, the official responsible for informing the UN Human Rights Commission about existing and emerging problems with the world's food supply, warned that
Rushing to turn food crops — maize, wheat, sugar, palm oil — into fuel for
cars, without first examining the impact on global hunger is a recipe for disaster.(p. 8)
Most fundamentally, the problem is that the production of biofuels, or agrofuels, as the Rapporteur prefers to call them as a means of focusing attention on their agricultural origins, sets the stage
for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world’s 2 billion poorest people". (Quoting Lester Brown of The Earth Policy Institute p. 8)
His primary concern:
If there are not conscious efforts to ensure that producing biofuels does not bring greater hunger in its wake, then the poor and hungry will be the victims of these new fuels. (p. 9)
The Economics of Agrofuels and Its Beneficiaries
- Agrofeuls, bioethanol and biodesiel, are produced from food crops. Bioethonal is produced from sweet, starchy foods, including sugar cane and beet, corn, potatoes, wheat and manioc. Biodesal comes from vegetable oils, including soy, palm, rapeseed, peanuts, coconuts and other oil rich plants. All of these crops are essential food crops.
- The European Union, The United States and Brazil have set ambitious renewable fuel targets and massively increased investment in such fuels. The Rapporteur notes several reasons for this promotion of agrofuels. He notes the need to reduce greenhouse gases and the desire for independence from mid-east petroleum. The Inter-American Development Bank has even suggested that
Latin America will be the Persian Gulf of biofuels, except that of course Latin America is much more stable as a source of energy. (p. 9)
- Also important
is pressure from the agro-industrial interests that will benefit from a rapid expansion in the production of agrofuels. As oil prices rise, it becomes more viable to invest in alternative energies, the "green gold" of biofuels (p. 9)
Supporting this last assertion, the report notes that both bioethanol and biodesel can, with specially adopted engines, completely replace petroleum products as a fuel for autos and other forms of transportation. But they are generally used as a 5-10% blend with regular gasoline or diesel. Sometimes, they are used to replace petroleum based additives currently used in standard fuels. Consequently, they do not threaten petroleum based products; rather they compliment them.
This means that, so far, oil companies do not feel threatened by the shift towards agrofuels. On the contrary, the global corporate monopolies of oil, grain, cars and biotechnology are rushing to consolidate partnerships: Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) with Monsanto, Chevron with Volkswagen, BP and DuPont with Toyota (p. 10)
- As a result the industrial countries of the North and corporations based in those countries are attempting to capture the agricultural production of the nations of the South to feed their appetite for agrofuels. Already
the United States and the European Union are heavily dependent on imports from Latin America of soya, sugar cane and palm oil, some African countries, such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Ghana, for palm oil and Asian countries, including India, Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the main palm oil producers. Such production is also much cheaper in developing countries. For example, it is much cheaper to produce a litre of ethanol in Brazil (15 Euro cents) than in the United States (30 Euro cents) or Europe (50 Euro cents) (p. 11)
The Consequences of Agrofuels for the World Hunger
- The price of basic foods will increase. Already, the price of corn tortillas, accounting for 45% of the total expenses of a poor Mexican family, increased 400% in 2007, causing food riots. Prices for basic food commodities have increased or will do so
The well-regarded think tank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), has estimated that prices will rise dramatically in the near future if the production of biofuels is increased. It is estimated that there could be a rise of 20 per cent in the international price of maize between now and 2010, and 41 per cent by 2020. The prices of vegetable oil crops, especially soya and sunflower seeds could increase by 26 per cent by 2010 and 76 per cent by 2020, and wheat prices could increase by 11 per cent and then by 30 per cent. In the poorest regions of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, the price of manioc could rise by 33 per cent and up to 135 per cent by 2020.31 IFPRI believes that this will set up a battle of "food versus fuel", unless there are urgent investments in moving to the second generation of biofuels that will not depend so much on food products. The consequences of such a rapid increase in food prices would be grave. IFPRI projects that the number of people suffering from undernourishment would increase by 16 million people for each percentage point increase in the real price of staple food. This could mean that 1.2 billion people would be suffering from hunger by 2025.
- With this rapid increase in prices will come an intensification of competition over the use of land, forests and other natural resources. Corporations and large investors will buy lands currently occupied by peasants and other indigenous peoples and push such people off the land. This has already happened in Columbia, where investors have bought land for palm oil; in vast areas of the Amazonian basin of Latin America due to the expansion of soy production, and in Indonesia. The result is a vast increase in impoverished landless laborers, a massive decrease in forests and other living resources, and a consequent decrease in the earth's natural carbon sinks.
- Those forced off their land may be forced into extremely exploitative work conditions, as in Brazil where armies of seasonal workers cut a ton of sugar cane for about $1.25 in conditions that have caused hundreds of deaths. Even worse, total employment is likely to decline
In Brazil, it is estimated that 100 hectares dedicated to family farming generate at least 35 jobs, while 100 hectares dedicated to industrial farming of sugar cane and oil palm plantations provide only 10 jobs, and of soybeans half a job. If industrial farming takes over land formerly dedicated to family farming, the net effect will be fewer jobs. The possibilities for agrarian reform to increase access to land for landless families may also be halted. (p. 14)
- Although there are few studies examining the matter, the report points to the probability that agrofuel production will require large amounts of water, diverting this increasingly scarce resource from the production of food crops.
Conclusion
It appears that the production of agrofuels is a disaster for everyone except large investors and corporations and some, often corporate, farmers in the US Mid West. The UN Special Rapporteur, however suggests that there is the possibility of developing technologies that can produce biofuels from materials other than food crops. He cites the ability to use crop residues such as corn cobs, the sugar cane material left after the juice is extracted, rice husks and banana leaves. The use of such materials would be complimentary to existing agriculture, allowing farmers to supplement their incomes while disposing of what is currently waste. Such production would also require much less excess water, water above the needs of food production.
Another possibility is to adopt technologies using non-food crops that grow in arid or semi-arid regions not suitable for food production. Already the oil-rich plant Jatropha Curcas can be grown on arid lands of Africa. Using this plant to produce biofuel might just provide the small African farmer a new source of livelihood, while not requiring the use of land already devoted to food, forests or other essential natural resources.
But this would require a significant change in the behavior of Northern corporations and investors. The probability of such a change seems low.