Food market: the uncertain consequences of the biofuel revolution

Recently, a fierce debate on the role of biofuel in the rise of food prices at world level has been growing. If the goals of the UE, US and other economic giants such as India are important to partially explaining this process it is, however, not possible to ignore other factors linked to the structure of the world market rather than to the development of a new orientation in energy policies.
The amount of foodstuffs required to supply food for a constantly growing world population can only increase year after year. The increase in the demand of wealthy countries for meat and dairy products (for which it is necessary to have greater economic resources than those necessary for grain, fruits and vegetables) is submitting the earth to an ever greater productive effort. The points of view are now incredibly contrasting: some people state that the present system is more than sufficient to satisfy world needs, even considering the constant technologic improvement and the presence of non-exploited lands uncultivated at the present time. According to other people, the earth would already be at the limits of its possibilities, and a further agricultural exploitation would risk to compromise even more an already damaged environmental balance. The debate on biofuels places itself in this already problematic opposition. At the beginning they were celebrated as the answer to the dependence on oil, while recently they have been put into question by several non-governmental organizations, until even the United Nations have warned the Governments against an excessive use. It is a strong concern, to the point that the European Commission has even called a consultation on the problem, to which many organizations and lobbies have answered (not only Europeans), for or against a further increase in the production of biofuels.

A deep analysis of the problem shows very contrasting aspects that question the actual sustainability of biofuels as an alternative to fossil energy. In fact, if on the one hand the researches agree unanimously on the ecologic characteristics of these fuels at the level of their discharges, on the other hand it is difficult to define the total impact of a massive boost on their use. The European Commission is evaluating, to this purpose, the adoption of a certification allowing the production and import of biofuels produced only and exclusively in a sustainable manner- a question in the recently suggested consultation just concerned the criteria to adopt in this sense. But, as underlined by some ONG, their definition is not easy to be given and could not consider some socio-economic factors which are extremely important for some poor countries: some of them fear to find themselves, once again, to need to sacrifice the subsistence agriculture for the uncertain benefits of the exportation monocultures, subjecting themselves to the jolts of the international market. Nevertheless other significant importers, such as China, could decide to adopt no one of these mechanisms, propelling in this way some production methods which are ecologically disastrous. The destruction of the world’s green lungs, in fact, could no way be compensated by a wider use of ‘clean fuels’. It is then fundamental the question of the food markets and the essential necessity to enforce a deeper control on the prices, protecting the power of purchase of that part of the citizenry which could suffer, on a world level, from market dynamics which are not adequately counterbalanced by public policies.

Equilibri