Food, Fuel and Fiber? The Challenge of Using the Earth to Grow Energy

Doubts about whether the rapid switch to biofuels was responsible for the spike in many food prices were washed away when the UK newspaper The Guardian got hold of a non-public World Bank report on the subject (see “Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis,” 4 July 2008). A top World Bank analyst had estimated that growing demand for biofuel was responsible for about 75% of the 140% food price increase since 2002. This revelation fueled a growing chorus of international voices that had already been raising alarms. The director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, for example, made a strong statement about the “incomprehensibility” of subsidizing biofuels and diverting food “to satisfy a thirst for vehicles.”

Meanwhile, the world’s poor and hungry were not alone in suffering the impact of the world’s new love for biofuels; the Amazon rainforest was also “feeling the effect.” Soy production has been increasing in Brazil, partly in response to rising prices for this staple of the world economy, driven by declining US production. Brazil is also a major producer of biofuel, but mostly in the form of ethanol from sugarcane. Brazilian ethanol is promoted as being “safe” for the Brazilian rainforest, because sugarcane is not grown in rainforest areas. Unfortunately, US ethanol from corn is not so safe for the rainforest, because the rising soy production in Brazil has been coming, in part, at the direct expense of rainforest areas: trees are being cleared to make way for new soy production.

Thus it was that hunger protests in Indonesia were part of the same chain of economic cause and effect as rainforest losses in Brazil, through the mediating influence of American biofuel policy decisions.

World Changing