Biofuel or food? Competition over desirable farmland

The rich countries of the world need enormous quantities of biofuel. It will mainly be produced – cheaply and efficiently – in the poor countries. Old colonial core-periphery patterns persist and are tightly locked into the visions outlined by the heavyweight international agencies.

The vital issues of our world are all to do with energy, food and climate change. These three are also interlinked: consumption of fossil fuels affects the climate, and the production of alternative energy – biofuels – affects availability of food by increasing competition over desirable farmland.

Magdalena Kuchler is studying the arguments put forward by some important international organisations on these three vital issues. She is a postgraduate student at the Department of Water and Environmental Studies and linked to Climate Science and Policy Research (CSPR) at Linköping University.
She has studied documents from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), which was created by a small number of high-income countries in connection with the oil crisis in the 1970s. According to Magdalena Kuchler, these organisations and their view of the future have a big part to play in influencing political decisions, which is why she decided to critically examine how they reason on the future.

She finds that it is the needs of richer nations that take control in the debate. Their top priority is the energy issue. After that comes climate, followed by availability of food in last place.
“The debate revolves around how we can produce sustainable energy”, she says. “On the other hand, nobody talks about how much energy we can sustainably produce, and the idea that we would have to save energy does not seem to cross their minds – despite the fact that we know that large quantities of biofuel can hardly be produced sustainably.”
The case is quite the opposite: it appears that the international organisations see a future where we can continue increasing our energy consumption thanks to cheap biofuels from poor countries. With their vast tracts of arable land, good climate and cheap labour, they are supposed to save us from the energy crisis and solve the climate issue in one fell swoop.

Magdalena Kuchler

But even the poor countries are portrayed as winners. They can produce a commodity that is attractive on the global market, which provides both an income and plenty of work opportunities.
The FAO even says that investing in biofuels could bring about a renaissance for rural development and agriculture in Africa, which, today, is poorly productive and neglected.
Brazil is often highlighted as a good example in their commitment to biofuel. The country is currently the world’s biggest exporter of ethanol. The raw material used is sugar cane, which is grown in large monocultures. A sizeable and growing proportion of Brazil’s arable land is, according to the country’s own plans, going to be used for ethanol production. What this means is that other crops are pushed aside and that, in the long term, those same rain forests that we want to save are threatened. Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva, is also travelling around countries in Africa, encouraging them to follow their example and offering technical assistance.

“The problem”, explains Magdalena Kuchler, “is that, in the face of the enormous quantities of biofuel that are needed, small-scale, long-term sustainable farming is never going to be profitable. A peasant farmer in Africa cannot deliver the solution to first world’s energy problems. These require large-scale plantations.”
Brazil’s success story does have a dark side, which the international organisations do not mention, she says. The environmen¬tal damage is huge. There are not even that many job opportunities, since efficient production requires a high degree of mechanisation – even in countries where labour is inexpensive.

Sugar cane harvest

The issue of how long-term sustainable food production is affected by large-scale efforts to manufacture biofuel is not discussed very much by the international organisations. This is in spite of the fact that every sixth inhabitant of our planet – over a billion people – are still lacking daily food. The number of the world’s hungry has even increased in recent years; from 850 million by almost 200 million to arrive at the number we have today.
“This should worry at least the FAO more than it does”, says Magdalena Kuchler.
“The peasant farmers in the poorest countries are expected to have greater purchasing power when they can sell biofuel to us”, she continues, “but, at the same time, we expect cheap products.”

Even now, because the rich countries of the world are greatly subsidising their own agriculture, farmers in the poorer countries are finding it difficult to compete. Food prices are kept artificially low because of the subsidies, and farmers in poor countries – who do not receive any subsidies – are poorly paid for what they manage to grow. In the future scenarios presented by the international organisations, they are to instead concentrate on growing crops suitable for biofuel production and buy food from the rich countries. “Becoming reliant on food imports is hardly going to improve the food security situation”, Magdalena Kuchler points out, “as proved by the recent food crisis.”

Her conclusion is that the international agencies concentrate on problems faced by the rich countries.
“We do not face any food crisis here. The issue of food security lacks importance for us, and that is reflected in their documents.”
She then poses a question that may seem completely obvious but is rarely, if ever, asked:
“If we are so interested in stimulating agriculture in Africa, how come we are putting so much emphasis on biofuel instead of directly on food production? It is food they need.”
She also says that the future as seen by these international agencies would have the poor countries permanently confined to their role as producers of agricultural raw materials in constant dependence upon the rich. The colonial legacy lives on.

And not only does it live on, it is growing stronger. Magdalena Kuchler explains that, already, countries and multi¬national companies (often those in the oil business) are buying up massive tracts of land in Africa – or renting them for 50 years – so as to ensure biofuel production.
Short-sightedness and a lack of realism pervade visions of the future right up to the highest international level, she concludes.
“However we try to wriggle out of it, the problem needs a serious global reduction in energy usage. That is never discussed, though.

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Last updated: Fri Jan 20 16:27:00 CET 2012