Food-versus-fuel debate

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Bioenergy > Issues > Controversies > Analyses > Food-versus-fuel debate

Food -- or fuel?

Note: A new wiki page is being developed on biofuel impacts on food prices.

Many biofuel feedstocks like corn, sugarcane, and soybeans are also key sources of food for millions of people. Production of crops for bioenergy uses may also displace other food-related crops, and otherwise increase the cost and decrease the availability of foodstuffs, including plant and animal-based foods. This page examines the debates over what the ideal balance between food and fuel is and links to articles and resources that touch on this debate.

Contents

Events

2010

2009

2008

News

2010

  • NGOs take European Commission to court over biofuels reports , 9 March 2010 by Euractiv: "Four environmental groups have sued the European Union's executive for withholding documents they say will add to a growing dossier of evidence that biofuels harm the environment and push up food prices."
    • "In December 2008, EU leaders reached agreement on a new Renewable Energy Directive, which requires each member state to satisfy 10% of its transport fuel needs from renewable sources, including biofuels, hydrogen and green electricity, by 2020."
    • "However, concerns have been raised that increased biofuel production would result in massive deforestation and have severe implications for food security, as energy crops replace other land uses (so-called 'indirect land-use change').
    • "The lawsuit, lodged with the EU's General Court, the bloc's second highest court, alleges several violations of European laws on transparency and democracy."[2]
  • U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise, 21 January 2010 press release by Earth Policy Institute: "The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year."
    • "In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies."
    • EPI calculates that "even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol..., it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs."
    • "The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year....Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger."[4]
  • 'Invasive' biofuel crops require monitoring and mitigation measures, 21 January 2010 by ENN/European Consumers Bioenergy Division: "Biofuel crops will impact on biodiversity and natural ecosystems unless tightly controlled, says a panel of European experts."
    • The Bern Convention "adopted a recommendation on potentially invasive alien plants being used as biofuel crops (Recommendation 141, 2009). They warn that some biofuel crops are able to escape as pests, and in so doing impact on native biodiversity. As rural communities plan to grow more biofuel crops, the likelihood of new and harmful 'invasions' will increase apace."[5]

2009

  • Biofuels Take Center Stage in Copenhagen, 17 December 2009 by 25x'25 REsource Blog: Copenhagen climate summit events "highlighted the critically important role biofuels can play in addressing the multiple challenges that must be addressed in a rapidly changing world. Specifically, the events and discussions underscored how renewable, clean fuels sustainably created from current and next generation bioenergy feedstocks can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), improve food security, stimulate economic development and reduce global poverty."[7]
  • Tanzania Suspends Biofuels Investments, 14 October 2009 by the Green Inc. blog of the New York Times: "Reacting to mounting pressure from farmers and environmental groups citing concerns over food shortages, the Tanzanian government has reportedly suspended all biofuel investments in the country and halted land allocations for biofuel development."[8]
  • African Jatropha Boom Raises Concerns, 8 October 2009 by The New York Times Green Inc. blog: "Once the darling of biofuel enthusiasts, jatropha is raising concerns."
    • "In a report leaked to The East African newspaper last week, Envirocare, an environmental and human rights organization, highlighted the impact of the jatropha trade in Tanzania — including concerns over the displacement of farmers, water consumption, and the substitution of food crops for biofuels."
    • "Indeed, of 13 potential bioenergy crops analyzed...in a study...in the American Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, rapeseed and jatropha were found to be the least water-efficient biofuels."[9]
  • The Other Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis in Global Land Use, 5 October 2009 by Yale Environment 360: "Our use of land, particularly for agriculture, is absolutely essential to the success of the human race. We depend on agriculture to supply us with food, feed, fiber, and, increasingly, biofuels. Without a highly efficient, productive, and resilient agricultural system, our society would collapse almost overnight."
    • "[L]and use is also one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Of the three most important man-made greenhouse gasses — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — land use and agricultural practices, including tropical deforestation, emit 30 percent of the total. That’s more than the emissions from all the world’s passenger cars, trucks, trains and planes, or the emissions from all electricity generation or manufacturing. Compared to any other human activity, land use and agriculture are the greatest emitters of greenhouse gasses. The vast majority comes from deforestation, methane emissions from animals and rice fields, and nitrous oxide emissions from heavily fertilized fields. Yet, for some reason, agriculture has been largely able to avoid the attention of emissions reductions policies."[10]
  • New paper by Tim Searchinger: Evaluating Biofuels: The Consequences of Using Land to Make Fuel (PDF file), published by the German Marshall Fund of the United States - 2009.
    • "If not used for biofuels, land would typically already be growing plants that are removing carbon from the atmosphere."
    • "Many controllable factors could in theory change the world land use situation for good or bad, but if those factors are independent of biofuels, they neither make biofuels a better strategy nor a worse one."
    • "To the extent biofuel critics have blamed these rises in crop price for increased retail food prices in the United States and Europe, they have probably exaggerated. Crop prices are a small fraction of the retail food prices paid in grocery stores, and an even smaller fraction in restaurants. But the impact on the poor in developing countries is large, particularly on the roughly one billion people who live on $1 per day or less and who are likely already chronically malnourished, and the three billion who live on less than $2 per day."
  • Bioenergy Makes Heavy Demands On Scarce Water Supplies, 4 June 2009 by ScienceDaily: "The 'water footprint' of bioenergy, i.e. the amount of water required to cultivate crops for biomass, is much greater than for other forms of energy. The generation of bioelectricity is significantly more water-efficient in the end, however – by a factor of two – than the production of biofuel. By establishing the water footprint for thirteen crops, researchers at the University of Twente were able to make an informed choice of a specific crop and production region. They published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of 2 June."
    • "By linking the water consumption to the location and climate data, it is possible to select the optimum production region for each crop. This makes it easier to prevent biomass cultivation from jeopardizing food production in regions where water is already in short supply".
    • "Water that is used for bioenergy – whether it be for a food crop such as maize or a non-food crop such as jatropha – cannot be used for food production, for drinking water or for maintaining natural eco-systems."[15]
  • Stress-Testing Biofuels: How the Game Was Rigged, 12 May 2009 by Time Magazine: "An outgrowth of the 2007 energy bill, [U.S. government evaluation "tests"] were supposed to document whether corn ethanol and other biofuels designed to replace fossil fuels would accelerate or alleviate global warming overall."
    • "The draft conclusions...were that cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation renewables will dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over their entire life cycle, but that in some scenarios, corn ethanol (as well as lesser-used soy biodiesel) can produce even more emissions than gasoline."
    • "Study after study suggests that growing fuel could be a disaster for the planet, while raising global food prices and promoting global food riots. The amount of grain it takes to fill an SUV with ethanol could feed an adult for a year; we need every acre of farmland to feed the world."[16]
  • Biofuels for the poor, 23 March 2009 opinion piece in The Jakarta Post: "After being criticized for being slow to develop the local biofuel industry, the Indonesian government has finally issued two important policies; first, a decree issued last year obliging industries and the transportation sector to use biofuels; and second, its recent decision to provide subsidies for sales of the fuel."
    • "At present, our biofuel producers mostly use crude palm oil as a raw material. This has sparked criticism, since by using a food source for fuel in order to solve the energy crisis, we are also creating a food crisis. There are also fears that, in anticipation of growing demands from biofuel sector, CPO firms will continue a trend of clearing forest areas for plantations, thus creating massive environmental problems."[20]
  • UN debates global food cost rise, 26 January 2009 by BBC News: "Although [food] prices have fallen from the highs recorded during the unprecedented spike at the beginning of 2008, they have not fallen back to where they had been before the crisis began."
    • "And many of the factors that contributed to the rise then are still driving prices up....These include competition with biofuels for scarce land, worsening agricultural productivity, the increasing proportion of people living in cities, and the effects of climate change threatening harvests."[22]

2008

  • Biofuel producers warn EU over "unjustifiably complex" sustainability rules, 7 November 2008 by BusinessGreen: "Eight developing countries have written to the EU warning they will complain to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it passes proposed legislation designed to improve the environmental sustainability of biofuels by restricting the types of fuels the bloc imports."
    • "The EU is considering legislation that is intended to ban the purchase of biofuels from energy crop plantations that are believed to harm the environment and lead to food shortages by displacing land used for food crops and contributing to rainforest deforestation."
    • "[E]ight countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Indonesia and Malaysia – have written to the EU to protest against the proposals" in a letter that "claims that the new rules would 'impose unjustifiably complex requirements on producers' and argues that environmental criteria 'relating to land-use change will impinge disproportionately on developing countries'."[23]
  • EU biofuel panic threatens planet - Brazil envoy, 19 September 2008 by Reuters: "Europe's heated debate over biofuels risks weakening one of the world's best tools to fight climate change and one of the developing world's best hopes for economic growth, Brazil's ambassador to the EU said on Friday."
    • Maria Celina de Azevedo Rodrigues ""said arguments that biofuels had pushed up food prices had been proved false by the fact food prices were now falling in tandem with oil prices, which had previously inflated costs of fertiliser and transporting food to market."[25]
  • India sets new biofuel target, risks food price row, 11 September 2008 by Reuters UK: "India aims to raise blending of biofuels with petrol and diesel to 20 percent within a decade, threatening a revival of the food-versus-fuel debate."
    • "Higher use of biofuels will intensify the debate on the use of farmland for fuel in India, and encourage farmers to reduce grain cultivation for food, said T.K. Bhaumik, an economist with Assocham, a leading business chamber."[26]
  • Texas Biofuels Waiver Request Shot Down, 7 August 2008 by Environment News Service: "The Bush administration today denied a request by Texas to cut the U.S. biofuels mandate in half, rejecting the claim that the massive increase in corn-based ethanol is causing economic harm to the state's livestock industry and raising food prices."
    • "Today's announcement came in response to a request made in April by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut the RFS mandate by 50 percent."
    • "Perry ... argues that demand for ethanol is responsible for corn prices that reached record levels in June, up nearly 120 percent from 2007. Those high corn prices that are harming his state's cattle and poultry farmers, Perry said in his request, and are being passed onto consumers in higher food costs."
    • "But the head of the EPA disagreed. The RFS mandate is not causing the "severe economic harm" required by law to waive the requirement, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said today."
  • Biofuels major driver of food price rise - World Bank, 28 July 2008 by Reuters: "Large increases in biofuels production in the United States and Europe are the main reason behind the steep rise in global food prices, a top World Bank economist said in research published on Monday."
    • "World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent."
    • "An unfinished version of the research that surfaced in news stories sparked a heated debate earlier in July".[27]
  • Exclusive: we publish the biofuels report they didn't want you to read, 10 July 2008 in The Guardian: An internal report from the World Bank "argues that the drive for biofuels by American and European governments has pushed up food prices by 75%. That is in stark contrast with the White House's claims that using crops for fuel, rather than food, has only pushed prices up by 2-3%."
    • "Prompted by the Guardian's report, the Bank may now push the report out - although it may not be in quite this form."
    • Therefore, the Guardian has posted the original report here (PDF file).
  • Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis, 4 July 2008 in The Guardian: "Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian."
    • "The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises."
    • "Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt."
    • The report "argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher."[28]
  • Another Inconvenient Truth: How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change (PDF file), published 25 June 2008 by Oxfam. Excerpts:
    • "Biofuel mandates and support measures in rich countries are driving up food prices as they divert more and more food crops and agricultural land into fuel production." (p. 3)
    • "The World Bank estimates that the price of food has increased by 83 per cent in the last three years....Thirty per cent of price increases are attributable to biofuels, suggesting biofuels have endangered the livelihoods of nearly 100 million people and dragged over 30 million into poverty." (p. 3)
    • "The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) notes that by forcing up food prices, rich-country support for biofuels acts as a tax on food – a regressive tax felt most by poor people for whom food purchases represent a greater share of income." (p. 3)
    • "Oxfam calls on rich countries urgently to dismantle support and incentives for biofuels in order to avoid further deepening poverty and accelerating climate change." (p. 3)
  • Food-related industries launch anti-biofuel campaign, 10 June 2008 by Bloomberg.com, in the Houston Chronicle: In the United States, the "Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Meat Institute, the National Restaurant Association and other groups say rising corn-based ethanol production is pushing food costs higher." Their new lobbying alliance, "Food Before Fuel", is "calling on Congress to step back and re-evaluate our biofuels policy, which is distorting the marketplace and harming the environment and consumers."[29]
  • U.N. Chief to Prod Nations On Food Crisis, 2 June 2008 by the Washington Post: "U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will issue an urgent plea to world leaders at a food summit in Rome on Tuesday to immediately suspend trade restrictions, agricultural taxes and other price controls that have helped fuel the highest food prices in 30 years, according to U.N. officials....The United Nations will also urge the United States and other nations to consider phasing out subsidies for food-based biofuels -- such as ethanol".
    • The article notes that a "World Bank analyst estimated that biofuel production has accounted for 65 percent in the rise of world food prices, while the IMF has concluded that biofuel production is responsible for 'a significant part of the jump in commodity prices.'"
      • "But the United States has defended the production of biofuels, saying it has driven down oil consumption over the past three years. 'According to our analysis, the increased biofuels production accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the overall increase in global food prices,' said Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer".[30]
  • The Impact of Biofuels on Commodity Prices, April 2008, published by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs): "Other things being equal, biofuel production should put upward pressure on cereal, oilseeds and sugar prices. However, a closer look at recent price developments suggests that there are a number of factors affecting current commodity prices some of which are cyclical and some of which are structural in nature"
    • "The changes in agricultural prices have historically not been fully reflected in consumer prices."
    • "Several studies have attempted to evaluate the future impact of biofuel production on commodity prices; results should be interpreted with caution as work on models that combine agricultural and biofuel markets is still at an early stage."
    • "Second generation biofuel production has the potential to reduce land requirements and increase productivity."
  • The World Food Crisis, 10 April 2008, editorial by the New York Times: "Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation....The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt....The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India....But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels."
    • "The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years."
    • "At best, corn ethanol delivers only a small reduction in greenhouse gases compared with gasoline. And it could make things far worse if it leads to more farming in forests and grasslands. Rising food prices provide an urgent argument to nix ethanol’s supports."[31]
  • Food prices to rise for years, biofuel firms say, 3 April 2008, by Reuters: "Staple food prices will rise for some years, but should eventually fall to historical averages as harvests increase, biofuel company executives said on Thursday."
    • Victor Deike of Novus Europe said that second-generation biofuels -- (those made from non-food crops such as jatropha, miscanthus or reed canary grass) "should take the heat out of food prices as many did not compete with food for land."
    • "Jean-Marc Jossart, secretary-general of the Belgium-based European Biomass Association (AEBIOM), said opinion was divided over whether second-generation biofuels could take the pressure off food prices....[since] crops such as miscanthus could also reduce the availability of land that could be used for food."[32]

2007

Publications

See books, reports, scientific papers, position papers and websites for additional useful resources.

US Corn Ethanol

Available vehicle fuels increasingly include fuel blends that combine petroleum-derived fuels (diesel and gasoline/petrol) with plant-derived fuels (biodiesel and ethanol). Image of a gasoline pump in the Eastern United States, 2008.
  • Corn prices were at an 11 year high, with farmers getting up to $3.50 a bushel.[36].
  • With ethanol now a serious factor in grain markets, the debate over what the impact of the US ethanol industry will be on world food supplies has heated up.
  • Boom in biofuel leading to higher costs for food, 11 May 2007 from the Asahi Shinbun. The increase in US corn going to ethanol production is driving up the prices of other products. In particular farmers are planting less soybeans, which has resulted in a 10% increase in the price of mayonnaise made by Japan's largest producer. It was their first price hike in 17 years. Beer and beef producers are also feeling the pressure.

Mexico

China

European Union

  • Food industry calls for a more balanced biofuel policy February 5 2007 from Foodnavigator-usa.com. "With the increasing use of some of their raw materials for the production of biofuels, the food industry is calling on the European Commission to take measures to ensure they do not face further price hikes for their supplies."
  • Biofuel expansion raises the risk of future famines 28 January 2007 from Gulf News. "Switching more land from food to biofuel production raises the risk of future famines, a conference organised by the Soil Association, Britain's leading organic certification body, was told."
  • EU food demand for biofuel production in the near future is however not excessively high November 22, 2006. "Research presented at the third Amsterdam Forum for sustainable energy held on November 21-22 2006 in Amsterdam, [[The Netherlands], showed that although a 14% replacement in 2020 would require between 10 and 20% of current cereal production levels, depending on the share of so-called [[second generation technology that will be used by that time. This can be met by increasing average crop yields with 10% (or less than 1% per year) and bioethanol conversion rates with 5% (less than 0.5% per year). Such increases have been realised in the past. Another source of biomass is 3 million ha that currently is excluded from production in the so-called set-aside program. Thus, there no real need for expansion into non-agricultural (nature, marginal) land, especially outside of the EU. Figures are more promising for sugarbeet (bioethanol), but not so for oilseed rape (biodiesel). One should further keep in mind that, while currently multiple hundreds of millions of cereals are used annually for animal feed, the actual amount of food required to feed the 800 million or so malnourished in the world is accounted to 100 million tons only. This calls, therefore, for a more specified and balanced discussion on the issue of food-versus-fuel."

Latin America


Controversies concerning bioenergy edit
Food security | Food-versus-fuel debate (Biofuel impacts on food prices)

Food crops used for biofuels: corn

Controversies concerning bioenergy edit
Food-versus-fuel debate | Land-use change (Tropical forest conversion)
Net energy debate | Peat burning | Sustainable agriculture


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