Features
Food or fuel?
As you're no doubt aware, the world is in the grip of a food crisis. The price of key foodstuffs such as corn, rice and wheat has soared in recent years, pushing 100 million more people below the $2 a day poverty line. Average food prices are now two and half times higher than in 2002 - and over half of this increase has occurred in just the last four months. The UN now says that 852 million people face a 'daily food emergency'.
Last year, a tonne of wheat cost $280 - it now stands around $800. The price of rice recently hit $1,000 per metric tonne for the first time, while corn prices have climbed 60 per cent in the last year. While westerners have been somewhat sheltered from rising costs due to the low proportion of our household expenditure spent on food, those in underdeveloped countries - where food can account for up to four fifths of household income - have been hit hard. Food riots have broken out in Somalia, Mexico and elsewhere, and incidents of rice and flour smuggling have exploded in Asia.
Biofuels to blame?
While the latest food crisis has various causes - including soaring energy costs, climate change and unfair trade regulations - biofuels have been pinpointed as a key culprit, with over 100 million tonnes of grain used for fuel instead of food each year. Land used for growing biofuels has shot up from 12 to 80 million hectares in the last six years, leaving less land to grow food. Filling a Range Rover with biofuel-derived ethanol requires as much grain as it take to feed an African person for a year. Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, last year described biofuels as a "crime against humanity."
But are biofuels really the main culprit? The factors behind the current crisis are so varied that it's difficult - perhaps impossible - to answer this question precisely. The knock on effects of biofuel production can be complex. Consider this: As US farmers have switched from soy to more suitable corn varieties to take advantage of biofuel subsidies, farmers in South America have been forced to grow more soy to offset an increase in soy prices. Grazing lands have thus been converted to soy production, and consequently farmers have stepped up the clearing of Amazonian rainforest to provide new land for the cattle - destroying an important carbon 'sink' in the process.
According to the Transnational Institute, an international think tank promoting social and environmental justice, maize price increases have been "due to the increasing amounts of US corn being used for ethanol rather than food. As ever, it is the poor…who suffer the worst impacts."
In South-East Asia, 87 per cent of all deforestation between 1985 and 2000 was attributed to palm oil plantations, according to Friends of the Earth. As well as being used in a wide variety of food products and cosmetics, palm oil is also used to produce biofuel. Deforestation in the region is now threatening one of the planet's most iconic species, the Orang-Utan, as well as countless others.
Food versus fuel
Not everyone agrees that biofuels are to blame though. Skeptics have pointed out that the proportion of palm oil being used for fuel may be as low as three per cent. Others have cited the fact that the cost of rice has risen rapidly as proof that biofuels are not a key driver of the food crisis - rice is not directly used in the production of biofuels. Some also point out that, according to the UN, there is enough food in the world to feed everyone - and excess farmland to grow biofuels - it's just that trade and distribution problems get in the way.
The International Energy Agency says biofuel production has cut crude oil use by 1 million barrels a day, while that the price of crude oil - already at a record high - would be 25 per cent higher without the use of biofuels, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the US, the National Corn Growers Association has issued a statement describing the 'food versus fuel' argument as being "fraught with misguided logic, hyperbole and scare tactics." The group claims its farmers can simply increase output to meet the growing demand for biofuel, without impacting on food supplies.
Regardless of the extent to which biofuels are contributing to the food crisis, it is difficult to see how they can help to mitigate global warming or act as a real global alternative to fossil fuels, at least in the short term. Even if there is currently sufficient land to grow biofuels without affecting food prices, there may not be for much longer.
The land crisis
In 1970, there were 0.38 hectares of arable land for every person on the planet. By 2050, the rising global population will shrink the figure to just 0.15 hectares, according to the UN. Some experts believe that more than 0.5 hectares is required per person for a healthy, ecologically sustainable diet. And while it may be possible to increase the amount of land under cultivation by as much 40 per cent through cultivation of marginal lands, doing so will require costly and energy-intensive irrigation.
Elsewhere, arable land is being lost quickly - between 5 and 7 million hectares disappear each year due to soil degradation and urbanisation. With the global population rising quickly and arable land and world food supply under threat, its difficult - perhaps impossible - to see to how biofuels can ever be cultivated on a big enough scale to provide a real alternative to fossil fuels.
Consider this: If the EU wanted to meet its target of having one tenth of its road transport fuel from biofuels by 2020 from within its own borders, it would require more than half the region's arable land at current yields. Clearly this is impossible, and so it remains likely the EU will continue to import biofuel from countries like Brazil and Indonesia, where virgin rainforest is being replaced with biofuel crops. Despite the potentially serious consequences of using food crops for fuel, the Irish government has so far refused to abandon its own biofuel targets.
Carbon neutral?
The notion that biofuels can help slow global warming is now in doubt too.
A study published in the journal Science earlier this year found that, when land use changes and the use of energy-intensive fertilisers are taken into account, biofuel production can cause a serious short-term increase in carbon dioxide emissions - and it can then take decades for biofuel crops to absorb the equivalent amount.
Sugar cane grown in Brazil - the most energy efficient biofuel crop - has such a 'carbon debt' of 17 years. Maize grown on set-aside land in the US has a carbon debt of 48 years, while it takes 840 years to reabsorb the equivalent amount of carbon released from the cultivation of palm oil in south east Asia. Even the shortest 'repayment' times are insufficient to combat climate change, as serious emission reductions are needed within the next decade to prevent the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passing the potentially dangerous threshold of 400 parts per million.
Sustainable?
How can biofuels be sustainable? So called second and third generation biofuels - which aren't produced from food crops, as opposed to first generation biofuel crops like corn, maize and soy - have been held up as a potential solution.
One second generation crop is Jatropha, a tough, weedy tropical plant that produces oily seeds and grows well on marginal land, so it needn't compete with food production. However, Jatropha can also be grown on fertile farmland, and as long as wealthy westerners can pay more to fuel their cars than the world's poor can pay to eat, it's difficult to see big grain producers ignoring biofuel crops unless they are mandated to.
The prospects for switchgrass, another 'second generation' crop, were recently boosted by a study which found it to be twice as energy efficient as previously thought, and capable of producing over five times as much energy as is required to cultivate it. But according to the Science study, it has a 'carbon debt' of 52 years, making it potentially useless in fighting global warming in the coming decades.
Some experts believe agricultural waste products - straw being a prime example - may provide a sustainable supply of biofuel in the future. A US government paper has suggested using 75 per cent of the country's crop residues to produce biofuel. However, one estimate suggests this could increase the rate of soil erosion by up to 100 times, as crop residues play a key role in keeping soil healthy.
Most recently, a lot of attention has focused on the potential to use freshwater algae as a source of 'third generation' biofuels. Because they can be cultivated in ponds, there is no competition with food crops, and algae produce far more fuel per unit area than traditional crops as they are highly efficient at converting sunlight to usable energy. However, technical challenges remain, and it's difficult to see the technology becoming commercially viable on a large scale in the near future. Removing water is one big challenge - there can be up to 1,000 parts of water for every part of algae in solution.
Looking forward
Despite the drawbacks, biofuels shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It's inevitable that a relatively new technology - or at least one new to large scale commercialisation - won't provide an immediate panacea. With reductions in carbon emissions needed urgently, it's difficult to see how biofuels can help to slow global warming. But biofuels can have a role to play - with further technological advancement, the stablisation of the global population and the introduction of an equitable system of trade that ensures food is distributed efficiently, we could find ourselves with sufficient land to grow them on a large scale. In the long term, they may be able to play an important role in our energy mix. To rely on them in the short term, however, wouldn't be wise.
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