FAO tool combines biofuels production with food security

With the bad press first generation biofuels have recently been receiving, all biofuels seemed to be rapidly falling from grace. A firm stressing of the differences between first and second generation biofuels was the answer of most biofuels proponents.

First generation biofuels require arable land being used for fuel production instead of for food crops. Nonetheless, many countries, some of them all too familiar with food shortages, are looking to enter the bioenergy market, and not just by producing biofuels from waste and other kinds of non-food biomass.

There’s actually no need for a complete ban on biofuels, if only the selection of crops, suitable production areas and methods is carried out carefully. The FAO comes to the rescue with a three-year project to ensure that bioenergy does not impair global food security. A new policy support tool is part of the project.

Sustainable production
Currently there’s pressure on the European Commission to adopt criteria for sustainable production of biofuels. The Netherlands are amongst the countries taking a leading role in the debate and in forming international coalitions of countries wanting to implement the proposed criteria. The FAO tool is right up the alley of these countries.

Five-step tool
The FAO helps governments to establish a bioenergy development scenario, with clear policy options and possible strategies. When a scenario is drafted, the new tool can be unleashed onto it, to calculate the effect of policy decisions on national food security.

It is a five-step analytical framework to calculate both positive and negative effects of a country’s entering the bioenergy sector in terms of food prices and rural incomes.

The framework will reveal its bioenergy potential by analyzing technical biomass potential; biomass production costs; economic bioenergy potential; macro-economic consequences; national and household-level impact and consequences on food security. This predicts which households are most vulnerable to food insecurity.

Newcomers
Test countries Peru, Thailand and Tanzania will be the first to use the tool. It’s a good idea not to focus on countries already making all the profits. Possible newcomers into the bio energy business are bound to refuse being excluded from this profitable market. And rightly so; entering the business could be crucial to them. For sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, it could be an answer to the huge food security challenges it faces from climate change.

The FAO is organizing a ‘High Level Conference on World Food Security and the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy’ in Rome from 3 to 5 June. The organization is determined to include food security in negotiations over a successor document to the Kyoto Protocol.

Credits
FAO economists at the Copernicus Institute of the Dutch Utrecht of University and of the German Oeko-Institut in Darmstadt developed the tool.

It was presented last February during a technical consultation within FAO’s Bioenergy and Food Security project, which is funded by Germany.