Biofuel production hits food security?

Biofuel emerged as an alternative fuel to benefit the biotech companies and the trans-national corporations (TNCs) which claim that biofuel is a unique `green innovation' of the modern technology sensitive to the environment, ecology and the poor. Refuting this TNC claim, reputed and established scientists of the world are saying that the TNC claim is contrary to the reality as biofuel production causes food scarcity and environmental degradation. That by propagating this, they are rather committing crime against humanity.
Bio-fuel, also called agro-fuel, is available in solid, liquid and gaseous forms derived from biomass. Biomass develops from the living organisms of trees and animals or their by-products such as cowdung and the residues of plants and crops. It can be used for the production of heat or energy. The agricultural products that are used for developing biomass include maize and soybean in the USA; wheat, rapeseed and sugar beet in Europe; sugarcane in Brazil; palm oil in South East Asia; and jatropha, pongemia and sugar beet in India. Vegetable oil, bio-diesel, bio-alcohol, butanol, bio-ethanol and bio-methanol are the different kinds of bio-fuel produced across the world.
Biofuel began to be used before the World War II and was regarded as an alternative to the imported fuel. After the War, oil became cheap in the Middle East causing decline in biofuel production but while the global oil market encountered recession in 1973 and 1979 this created new interest in biofuel production. The trend of production registered decline in 1986 but began to increase in 2000. The trend thus oscillated due to the rise and fall in the international oil market price.
To promote biofuel as well as to replace fossil fuel, multinational companies (MNCs) have been active in growing soybean, maize, sugarcane, palm oil, etc, by using genetic technology in connivance with their local interest groups. To promote this technology, the proponents have placed a number of arguments. Firstly, biofuel will increase the security of fuel as a reliable alternative to fossil fuel. Secondly, biofuel is carbon-neutral, green and friendly to ecology and environment, and, therefore, it decreases the emission of greenhouse gas. Thirdly, poverty will decrease in the 'developing countries' through generation of new employments.
The proponents' statement that biofuel is carbon-neutral, so it does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, has been supported with a research employing the technique of 'Life Cycle Analysis'. The analysis shows that biofuel emits less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel such as petroleum and diesel does. Refuting this research claim, the scientists have asserted that biofuel is neither carbon-neutral nor green because it requires energy to produce bio-crop as well as to transform biocrop into fuel. The scientists from Britain, the US, Germany and Switzerland, including Professor Paul Crutzen who won Nobel Prize for his contribution to the research on ozone, said in a research report in 2007 that the amount of greenhouse gas emitted due to production of biofuel from rapeseed and corn is much more than saved.
Hence, the statement that biofuel is environment-friendly is absolutely false, say the environmentalists, because it hastens deforestation, and endangers the biodiversity. According to them, the proponents of genetic engineering are damaging the environment in two ways in Indonesia and Malaysia, for example. They are cultivating palm oil by destroying the rainforest on the one hand and transforming palm oil into biofuel on the other, which emits more greenhouse gas than required for petroleum refinement.
Referring to a recent research, five noted scientists of different countries have said in a joint letter to Rajendra K Pachaur, Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the whole process of producing one-tonne palm oil emits 10-30 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The scientists are David Pimentel of Cornell University; Tad Patzek of the University of California; Florian Siegert, managing director, Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH, Munich; Mario Giampietro of Institute of Environmental Sciences, Barcelona; and Helmut Haberl of Klagenfurt University, Austria.
The five scientists have questioned the basis of the IPCC publicity that biofuel production is eco-friendly and it reduces the emission of carbon dioxide. Moreover, they have warned that massive plantation of bio-fuel crops may cause displacement, eviction and 'disforestation', which eventually will 'negate benefits for decades or centuries'.
Besides, chemical fertiliser and poisonous pesticides are being applied intensively to increase the production of biocrops. Moreover, mono cropping in Asia and Latin America is creating adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecology through chronic deforestation and biocrop production, which are contributing to the increase in global warming and pollution. This means that "the net effect of burning bio-fuels is an increase in greenhouse gasses".
According to the researchers of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK, which has been known as the "Think Tank of 2007" in international development, it is possible to alleviate poverty through increased employment opportunities and economic growth. This argument of the ODI researchers is, however, not acceptable to many experts because they consider a counterpoint that the rising pressure on cultivable land to meet the increasing demand for biofuel production will rather increase than decrease poverty and hunger. Eventually, this will hit the rural poor, especially the women-headed households which struggle hard to collect woods, twigs and cowdung from the forests, sell them in the market to secure their livelihoods and meet their fuel requirement. Thus, it is creating new grounds for the marginalised men and women to experience another dimension of policy deprivation.
GRAIN, an international organisation working on biodiversity, reveals that the use of biofuel has increased to power transports and generate energy. To cope with the global fuel crisis, many countries of America, Asia and Europe have started to produce biofuel from plants and food crops. The US has now replaced much cultivation of barley with maize which is used in producing bioethanol, and this is a significant reason for rise in the price of maize. In June 2007, the United Nations reported that "soaring demand for bio-fuels is contributing to a rise in global food import costs". Shalini, coordinator of Delhi office of GRAIN, said, "Interestingly, a few giant multinational companies that control the energy markets will also dominate the foodgrains or plants for producing biofuel. Thus, food prices will be hiked due to shortage of food." It is notable that the US will have to transform its entire maize grown to produce seven percent fuel currently generated from petroleum, and if this continues to work it is feared that a serious crisis will hit the global food security.
Research compares the current food situation to a 'food riot' that hit Mexico about 100 yeas ago. The New York Times published on 8 June 1915 a report entitled "Fatal Food Riot in Mexico City" saying, "The agitation of the people owing to the scarcity of food is daily becoming more serious. Women carrying their babies in their rebozos and basket in hand scour the town from 5 O'clock in the morning till late at night in a vain quest for corn." The report adds that the previous day the 'crowds of the common class' clamoured for maize, surged around the doors and filled the city streets where babies were 'smothered to death' and 'women fainted'. While the impatient crowd rushed to the door, 'the military fired a volley into the air'.
With this reality of food crisis and hunger experienced so far, the TNCs have been active in promoting the market of biofuel in the 'developing' countries where huge biomass resources exist. According to International Energy Agency, the 'developing countries' meet 30% of their primary biofuel requirements from their existing biomass stocks, and two billion people of the world are dependent on biomass to meet their primary fuel requirements. Due to the increasing demand for biofuel, the biomass resources in the 'developing countries' have been more expensive.
President Bush in his 'State of the Union Speech' in 2006 declared that the US would cut its 75% fuel import by 2025 through biofuel production. Meanwhile the US has allocated 375 million dollars for research on biofuel. India has planned to set up a National Biofuel Mission and a National Biofuel Board for biofuel development. Both India and China are implementing their bio-ethanol and bio-diesel programmes while biofuel industries have been set up in many 'developing countries'. The countries involved in developing and expanding biofuel industry include Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. It has been reported that Honda Denki Company of Japan has expressed its interest in investing one billion dollar in the biofuel and sugar sector in Bangladesh.
Expressing concern at the growing expansion of biofuel market, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its summit that the production and use of biofuel added no improvement to the environment; it has rather created market instability. Calling for a five-year ban on agro-fuel market expansion, Mr Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on Food Rights, has said, "A moratorium on the conversion of land for agro-fuel production should be accompanied by the development of new energy technologies that do not compromise global food security." George Monbiot, an environmental campaigner, has argued in the British newspaper "The Guardian" that it is important to impose a 5-year freeze on biofuels and assess their impact on poor communities and the environment.
Environmental and human rights organisatons in different countries have voiced protests against biofuel production affecting food security. Simlar protests are being echoed also in Bangladesh. With the conscious global society we may also have to realise that biofuel production is a 'crime committed against humanity'. And with the global conscience, we may also have to stay alert and vigilant against it.

Bayezid Dawla is a development researcher and advocacy activist.