BIOFUELS AND FOOD SECURITY: CONFLICT OR COMPLEMENTARITY?

By Ignacy Sachs and - - Reprint | | Print |

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.

PARIS, Aug 14 2008 (IPS) - It makes no sense to single out biofuels as the scapegoat for high food costs without considering the effect of the spectacular rise in oil prices, writes Ignacy Sachs, honorary professor, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris and visiting fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Sao Paulo. Sachs writes in this article that we ought to strive for greater moderation and efficiency in energy consumption and take all the necessary steps to assure the complementarity between food and biofuels production. It should be possible to greatly increase biofuels output without encroaching on land used for food production or resorting to deforestation. Sachs calls for using waste and marginal land to grow robust oilseed plants; transforming into biofuels (including biogas) agricultural, forest, and domestic residues and moving as quickly as possible to second generation cellulosic biofuels; intensifying research on biodiversity, in particular on oilseed-producing tropical trees and on the third generation of biofuels (algae).

And yet we know that hunger is caused not by a shortage of food but by the lack of money to purchase it. This was the case for the many urban slum dwellers who were forced to leave the countryside by the lack of access to land, an absence of land reform, or the fact that their livelihoods were ruined by the competition from subsidised food dumped on the African markets by the European Union and the United States. This is not to minimise the hardships created by recent food price increases. However, it is preposterous to discuss their impact without looking into the structural causes of mass poverty.

Nor does it make much sense to single out biofuels as the scapegoat instead of considering the effect of the spectacular rise in oil prices, which drives up transportation and agricultural inputs costs, which in turn pushes food prices higher.

That said, we ought to strive for greater moderation and efficiency in energy consumption and, at the same time, take all the necessary steps to assure the complementarity between food and biofuels production. This objective is within our reach. By respecting the following conditions, it should be possible to greatly increase biofuels output without encroaching on land used for food production or resorting to deforestation :

– using whenever possible waste and marginal land to grow robust oilseed plants such as jatropha curcus;

– designing and implementing integrated food energy systems adapted to different biomes, in particular, using oil cakes as a fodder for cattle, thus reducing the amount of land required for raising cattle and releasing pasture land for agricultural production. The emphasis ought to be on the variety of the proposed solutions, tapping into biological and cultural diversity;

– transforming into biofuels (including biogas) agricultural, forest, and domestic residues and, to this end, moving as quickly as possible to second generation cellulosic biofuels;

– intensifying research on biodiversity, in particular on oilseed-producing tropical trees and on the third generation of biofuels (algae);

– learning from small-scale bioenergy production for the local consumption of rural populations;

– ensuring decent work alongside the protection of the right to food and, as rightly emphasised by Oxfam International, providing smallholders with the freedom of choice in their farming decisions with regard to the balance between producing food for consumption and products for the market;

– promoting collective entrepreneurship among smallholders through the creation of cooperatives and enabling them to enter into more equitable relations with large-scale biofuel producers.

Experience shows that the last two conditions are perhaps the most difficult to observe. Discussion up to now has centred on the choice of crops and techniques, as well as on many (unacceptable and avoidable) horror stories, such as the destruction of primary forests and the draining of swampland to grow palm trees in Indonesia.

But not enough attention is being paid to the social patterns arising from large scale investment in biofuels. We are confronted today with two major challenges : deleterious climate change, and the chronic shortage of opportunities for decent work, exacerbated by abyssal social inequality.

Our ambition should be to address both simultaneously, using the forthcoming biofuels boom as an opportunity for a new cycle of socially and environmentally-virtuous rural development with smallholders as the main protagonists. This calls for explicit and forceful policy measures by proactive developmental states, in sharp contrast to the prevailing reliance on market forces and the massive buy-up of agricultural land by investment funds.

The Brazilian biodiesel programme was designed to give preference to small-scale farmers living in the less advanced parts of the country. For the time being, this policy is not quite successful, and it has not been extended to the far more important production of ethanol dominated by large landowners and big agrobusinesses. Time is running out as new investment is piling up. The social dimension of the bioenergy programmes must be understood and addressed in order to avoid a new round of socially-perverse rural development characterised by a further deepening of inequality in access to land, wealth, and income. Brazil is ideally positioned to move along this path and to become a major global player in the shaping of post-oil civilisations. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)