Biofuel: Power from the poor

The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world’s 2 billion poorest people who need food for survival. For some, this (biofuel) could mean a change of lifestyle but for many it could cost lives. As interest increases in the use of biofuels to offset dependence on fossil fuels, there are challenges on many fronts. Biofuel production is going to require a significant land base to meet future production expectations. More fundamentally, it obscures the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food. By showing us only one side, “biofuels” fails to help us understand the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems-The Agro-fuels Transition.
The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the agro-fuels industry is breathtaking. Over the last few years venture capital investment in agro-fuels has increased manyfold. Private investment is swamping public research institutions. Behind the scenes-and under the noses of most national anti-trust laws-giant oil, grain, auto and genetic engineering corporations are forming powerful partnerships. These corporations are consolidating the research, production, processing, and distribution chains of our food and fuel systems under one colossal, industrial roof. Agro-fuel champions assure that because fuel crops are renewable, they are environmentally-friendly, can reduce global warming, and will foster rural development. But the tremendous market power of agro-fuel corporations, coupled with the poor political will on the part of governments to regulate their activities, leads to doubt these happy scenarios. Before jumping on the bandwagon, the mythic baggage of the agro-fuels transition needs to be publicly unpacked.

Biofuel crops will compete for land with food crops, driving up food prices and making their availability to poor further difficult. Increases in area sown to biofuel crops (exagrated by proxy farming) would take the most valuable, fertile lands out of food production. Poor people do need opportunities for economic growth but first they need food to eat. The world’s poorest people already spend 50-80% of their total household income on food. They suffer when high fuel prices push up food prices. Now, because food and fuel crops are competing over land and resources, high food prices may actually push up fuel prices. Both increase the prices of land and water. This perverse, inflationary spiral puts food and productive resources out of reach for the poor. The International Food Policy Research Institute has estimated that the price of basic food staples will increase 20-33 percent by the year 2010 and 26-135 percent by the year 2020. If current trends continue, some 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025. Instead of converting land to fuel production, what are urgently needed are massive transfers of food-producing resources to the rural poor.

Proponents of agro-fuels like to reassure “food versus fuel” skeptics by asserting that present agro-fuels made from food crops will soon be replaced with environmentally-friendly crops like fast-growing trees and switchgrass. The issue of which crops are converted to fuel is irrelevant. Even wild plants cultivated as fuel crops won’t have a smaller “environmental footprint” because commercialization will transform their ecology. They will rapidly migrate from hedgerows and woodlots onto arable lands to be intensively cultivated like any other industrial crop-with all the associated environmental externalities. Further, by genetically engineering plants with less lignin and cellulose, the industry aims to produce cellulosic agro-fuel crops that break down easily to liberate sugars, especially fast-growing trees. But, given the demonstrated promiscuity of genetically-engineered crops, we can expect massive genetic contamination. Agro-fuels will serve as the genetic Trojan horse, allowing to fully colonize both fuel and food systems.

Central Chronicle