Food vs. Fuel: Diversion of Crops Could Cause More Hunger

Eager to promote nonpetroleum energy sources to reduce dependence on oil imports and slow global warming due to fossil fuel emissions, the United States, Brazil, and the European Union are promoting biofuels made from food crops. Ethanol production (mainly in the United States and Brazil) tripled from 4.9 billion gallons to almost 15.9 billion gallons between 2001 and 2007, according to C. Ford Runge, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota. During that same period, biodiesel production (mainly for sale in the European Union) rose almost 10-fold, to about 2.4 billion gallons, although further expansion is now uncertain. Biofuel production has been prodded by government initiatives such as subsidies and tax incentives. But action is not necessarily the same thing as progress, say some experts. “We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history,” says Lester Brown, an analyst of global resources who founded the Worldwatch Institute and now heads the Earth Policy Institute. “The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.” The head of Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, agrees. As reported 23 March 2008 by Agence France-Presse, chairman and chief executive Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said, “If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy twenty percent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat. To grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible.” Even as growing quantities of corn and other grains are being diverted for use as biofuel feedstocks, newly affluent people—mainly in Asia—are eating more meat and dairy, which puts a further demand on animal feed supplies. There are many signs of concern. On 14 April 2008, the online African Energy News Review news service noted that food riots had killed five people in Haiti, adding, “The diversion of food crops to biofuel production was a significant factor contributing to global food prices rocketing by 83% in the last year, and causing violent conflicts in Haiti and other parts of the world.” In December 2007, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) calculated that world food prices rose 40% in 12 months prior, and the price hikes affected all major biofuel feedstocks, including sugarcane, corn, rapeseed oil, palm oil, and soybeans. On 17 December 2007, the International Herald Tribune quoted FAO head Jacques Diouf warning of “a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food,” particularly in the developing world. In the summary proceedings of the First FAO Technical Consultation Bioenergy and Food Security, held 16–18 April 2007 in Rome, authors from a group of UN agencies cautioned that “possible income gains to producers due to higher commodity prices may be offset by negative welfare effects on consumers, as their economic access to food is compromised.” (“Welfare” here refers to standard of living, not government payments.) “I think it is hardly in dispute anymore that the push by the U.S. and E.U. governments for a strong contribution and a mandated amount of biofuels to their energy mix has contributed to some of the food crisis problems we see today,” says Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation North America, a German-based nonprofit. Indeed, policy makers have suddenly begun to reconsider the biofuel mandate in light of the global food crisis.