Biofuels backlash - the world food crisis in perspective

Dr. Louise Fresco, professor of sustainable development in international perspective at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was assistant director-general of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome for nine years. In an interview with Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad she warns against the form British Prime-Minister Gordon Brown has chosen for his campaign against the world food crisis. His stressing of the “threat to world stability” the food crisis supposedly presents, could become a self-fulfilling prophesy, Dr. Fresco warns.

In October 2007 the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, addressing the UN General Assembly, called for a total moratorium on biofuels. “The right to live takes precedence over a full fuel tank,” both Ziegler and Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos recently stated angrily. Of course. No-one believes it doesn't. But are the two mutually exclusive? The right to live also takes precedence over Sunday morning croissants and no one claims we should ban those.

The question should be: can the world produce enough food for all of its inhabitants – and get it to them – while continuing to produce first generation biofuels? The latter, for instance, at a decreasing rate until second generation biofuels can meet the entire biofuel demand.

Agendas
The British MP is not the only one to exaggerate – as Fresco claims – the danger of the current food crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have their own reasons to do so. Fresco says that Brown needed a 'theme' like Al Gore 'has' climate change and Tony Blair is all about climate and Africa. The IMF and the World Bank see their roles diminished now that developing countries have access to financial markets without them. This crisis makes them needed again.

Speculators, like hedgefunds, play an important part as well, both Ziegler and Fresco stress. Because of the financial crisis, there is a lot of money available that would normally go to banks and derivatives. Stir up the political unrest and prices go up! Food producing countries profit from this mechanism as well: it gives them a reason to raise export tariffs in order to keep national prices low. Thus an artificial shortage is created.

Latin-America
Different Latin-American leaders have recently made firm statements either in favour of or against first generation biofuels – all in good harmony with the particular interests of their countries or their personal political situations.

Hugo Chávez, anti-American President of Venezuela, is critical of what he perceives of as the stealing of food from poor Latino's for American fuel. But keep in mind that his country sells 85 per cent of its oil to the United States and would not be happy to see this market evaporate. It may not come as a surprise that Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales from Bolivia – all like-minded – side with Chávez, but centre-right Peruvian President Alan García joined this critical group two weeks ago. His popularity is waning with food prices rising.

On the other hand, President Lula of ethanol producing Brazil – a huge player in the world of biofuels – claims biofuels are not the cause of food shortages, but Western import barriers and agricultural subsidies are. During a European tour last April, Lula stressed that ethanol production can help poor countries get less dependent on richer ones for energy. Only less than one per cent of Brazil's arable land is occupied by sugar cane for biofuels. Agricultural countries Argentina and Mexico, prospering under the high food prices, side with Brazil.

Structural or conjunctural
One of the causes of the food crisis is the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels. Fresco does not deny there is a food crisis, but she maintains it can be solved because its causes are conjunctural, not structural. Unlike oil, food is a never-ending source; the cycle starts over every year. Enough food can be produced for the all six billion inhabitants of this world and for a lot more as well. Fresco is confident that the Chinese realize consumption cannot be without limits and they won't demand the same amount of meat Americans eat. Chicken and porc form a problem, because of the rising prices of their food. “But cows mainly eat grass, which often grows in places where other crops cannot (...). Cows do not compete with humans for food.”

Then there are the recent bad harvests in Australia, southern Europe and the United States, combined with fertile European land being taken out of production and rising oil prices. Non of it is structural.

Also, Fresco adds, certain factors distort the picture: the fact that prices are in dollars; the uprisings in a country like Haiti – one of the very few failed states in the Western hemisphere – and the fact that food prices had been decreasing from the end of the Second World War on.

Ziegler, on the contrary, during his last interview as a UN rapporteur last week, did call food crops being used for biofuels, speculation and the restructuring the IMF imposes on Third World countries structural. Apart from that, he identifies conjunctural causes like climate change and the rise of a Chinese middle class.

But although Ziegler has always been controversial for his extreme statements, he also stresses that enough food can be produced. “The world could easily produce food to feed 12 billion human beings (...) a person dying today of hunger is being murdered,” he was quoted in l'Humanité as early as December 2006. However unconventionally, this answers the first part of our main question.

Solutions
Ziegler wants to ban first generation biofuels. What solutions does Fresco propose?

In large parts of the world land revenues could be two to three times what they are now if technology were to be used more efficiently and by protecting harvests from rats and from rotting due to unhygienic transport circumstances. But first and foremost, the world needs more young farmers. Farming is highly labour intensive and young people leave for the cities if there are no incentives to become farmers. Scholarships, loans and insurance opportunities against bad harvests are lacking. Furthermore, arable land in Europe should be taken back into production.

A country like the Netherlands, Fresco adds, needs a serious food policy, consulting all parties involved. Consumer awareness and stimulation to buy more consciously can work – it already is working for the elite.

EU biofuels directive
So considering all criticism, (hidden) agendas and proposed solutions, should the European Union revoke its 2020 directive that obligates blending of conventional vehicle fuel with at least ten per cent biofuel?

Not if it is true – as even the most outspoken critic of first generation biofuels maintains – that enough food could be produced for as much as twelve billion people. The surplus could not come from banning biofuels alone, so the other solutions, as proposed by Fresco, should be able to cover what is needed for the current world population. If we could combine measures, we could in the meantime slowly phase out first generation biofuels and fully turn to the second generation.