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The biofuel myth

Billy I. Ahmed
A biofuel is difficult to define. Most of the fossil fuels we use are biological in nature. Perhaps we have to say that a biofuel is one that does not add to the stock of total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These are plant forms that, typically, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and give up the same amount when burnt.
The politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the International Panel on Climate Change urge to present fuels made from com. sugar cane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from peak oil to a yet-to-be-defined renewable fuel economy.
Potentially biofuel draws its existence and power from opulence myths and directs one's attention away from economic interests that would benefit from the transition, while avoiding discussion of the growing North-South food and energy imbalance.
They becloud the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food, and fail to help us understand the intense outcomes of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems. "Agro-fuels” better describes the industrial interests behind the transformation, and is the term most widely used in the global South
The demand for ambitious renewable-fuel target by the industrialised countries led to the boom of biofuel. These fuels are to provide 5.75 per cent of Europe's transport power by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020. The United States wants 35 billion gallons a year.
These ambitious targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70 per cent of its farm -land with fuel crops. The entire com and soy harvest of the United States would need to be processed as ethanol and biodiesel. Converting most arable land to fuel crops would destroy the food systems of the North, so the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development countries are looking to the South to meet the demand.
The rapid capitalisation and concentration of power within the biofuels industry is fanatical. Over the past three years, venture capital investment in biofuels has Increased by 800 per cent. Private investment is swamping public research institutions.
The mixed picture about the
climate benefit of biofuels leads some observers to say the priority should be reducing energy use: initiatives on biofuels detract attention from this, they say, and are more ofa financial help to politically important farming lobbies than a serious attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Behind the scenes, under the noses of most national antitrust laws, giant oil, grain, auto and genetic engineering corporations are forming partnerships, and they are consolidating the research, production, processing and distribution chains of food and fuel systems under one industrial roof.
Biofuel champions assure us that because fuel crops are renewable, they are environment-friendly, can reduce global warming and will foster rural development But the tremendous market power of biofuel corporations, coupled with the poor political will of governments to regulate their activities, make this unlikely. These are nothing but myths, wanting more indepth probe to confirm the arguments in support of biofuels.
Because photosynthesis performed by fuel crops removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and can reduce fossil fuel consumption, we are told they are green. But when the full life cycle of biofuels is considered, from land clearing to consumption, the moderate emission savings are outweighed by far greater emissions from deforestation, bunting, peat drainage, cultivation and soil-carbon losses.
Every ton of palm oil produces 33 tons of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times more than petroleum. Ttopical forests cleared for sugar cane ethanol emit 50 per cent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.
Proponents of biofuels argue that fuel crops planted on ecologically degraded lands will improve rather than destroy the environment. Perhaps the government of Brazil had this in mind when it reclassified some 200 million hectares of dry-tropical forests, grassland and marshes as degraded and apt for cultivation.
In reality, these are the biodiverse ecosystems of the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado and the Pantanal, occupied by indigenous people, subsistence farmers and extensive cattle ranches. Introducing agrofuel plantations will push these communities to the agricultural frontier of the Amazon where the devastating patterns of
deforestation are well-known.
Soybeans supply 40 per cent of Brazil's biofuels. NASA has correlated their market price with the destruction of the Amazon rainforest — currently at nearly 325,000 hectares a year.
In the tropics, 100 hectares dedicated to family farming creates 35 jobs. Oil-palm and sugar cane provide 10 jobs, eucalyptus two, and soybeans a scant half-job per 100 hectares, all poorly paid.
Until recently, biofuels supplied mostly local and subregional markets. Even in the United States, most ethanol plants were small and farmer-owned. With the boom, big industry is moving in, centralising operations and creating enormous economies of scale.
Biofuels producers will be dependent on a camarilla of companies for their seeds, inputs, services, processing and sale. They’ are not likely to receive many benefits. Smallholders will be forced out of the market and off the land. Hundreds of thousands have already been displaced by the soybean plantations in the "Republic of Soy," a 50-million hectare area in southern Brazil, northern Argentina, Paraguay and eastern Bolivia.
Hunger results not from scarcity, but poverty. The world's poorest already spend 50 to 80 per cent of household income on food. They suffer when high fuel prices push up food prices. Now, because food and fuel crops compete for land and resources, both increase the price of land and water.
Further, if increased proportions of food crops such as com or soy are used for fuel, which may push prices up, affecting food supplies for less prosperous people.
The International Food Policy Research Institute has estimated the price of basic staples will increase 20 to33percentby2010and26to 135 per cent by 2020. Caloric consumption declines as price rises by a ratio of 12.
Limits must be placed on die biofuels industry. The North cannot shift the load of over consumption to the South because the tropics have more sunfight, rain and arable land. If biofuels are to be forest- and food-friendly, the grain, cane and palm oil industries need to be regulated, and not piecemeal.
All said and done the proponents of big hope for biofuel need to enforce standards to strike a balance between biofuel and food to save this planet from catastrophic food shortage. Bllyl ATwned is a tea researcher