Biofuels and the issues of Food-security

There is currently much hype surrounding biofuels in the international energy scene. They are seen as one of the solutions to the world energy crisis and the problem of climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. The European Union (EU) sees bio fuels as a 'sustainable energy' source, while the US government regards them as a way 'out of addiction to and dependence on' foreign oil and as a technological solution to climate change. As demand rises, many developing countries see bio fuels as a new export commodity.
Biofuels largely involve the production of ethanol from plants, as a substitute for fossil-based diesel fuel. Many of the current sources of biofuels are derived from food crops such as corn, sugarcane, soybean, rapeseed and oil palm. With the huge concern over rising food prices due to competition for fuel production, a new generation of biofuels produced from agricultural and timber wastes is being explored but has yet to become commercially viable.
Biofuel is not a new source of energy. Many communities across the world have used it in the past, albeit on a small scale and often at household level. For example, during the Japanese occupation in South-East Asia, many rural communities, having no access to kerosene, used oil extracted from Jatropha, coconut and castor beans for lighting lamps at night and for cooking.
In more recent decades, many communities across the Pacific, such as in the Marshall Islands and Bougainville, have been using coconut oil to fuel vehicles. Jatropha curcas, a secondary oil tree, has been widely promoted in Mali since the 1980s as a local source of fuel for cooking and lighting, as well as a viable source of livelihood for rural women. Within such a context, in many parts of the world, biofuels have actually shown promising potential to increase access to energy for the poor, and even provide sources of income for rural households especially women.
The current hype around biofuels, however, is setting a different course, away from the poor whose limited access to energy and food is gravely threatened. From being household-based, the biofuels that the whole world is so excited about are produced on a large industrial scale, within the international market dimension in an increasingly globalised world. What is even more disturbing is that this market paradigm is premised on the false belief that biofuels offer a quick technological fix to the global energy crisis.
As countries that are dependent on fossil-fuel imports scramble for cheaper alternatives, and countries that produce biofuels want to capture the potential market share, the illusion is being fostered that the current unsustainable production and consumption patterns of life can be sustained by clean biofuels instead of expensive and more pollutive fossil fuels. The emphasis is on fulfilling the tremendous demand of industries and the industrialised nations. This development gives rise to some key concerns in developing countries and the rest of the world.
The current biofuels are mostly produced from grain food crops such as soybean, corn and groundnuts and non-grain food crops such as cassava, sugarcane, oil palm and rapeseed. Other plants such as jatropha and pongamia are tree crops that have been underutilised in the past but are now receiving enormous attention for their commercial potential. Thus, competition between biofuel and food supply is expected to manifest itself at two levels: agricultural resources and price.
Large-scale cultivation of crops for biofuel will trigger new competition for agricultural resources, and/or will increase existing competition, mainly for land and water, between food production and biofuel production. More agricultural lands would have to be set aside for biofuel production, especially for grain and other food crops, to meet the increasing demand and thus control spiralling prices.
The problem is, the world already has little land to spare for growing food, let alone bio -energy crops. Even with the strategy to focus more on non-grain oil crops such as jatropha, which can even grow in marginal lands, massive production would require conversion of agricultural and forest lands to grow these crops on a commercial scale. Satellite data reveal that 40% of the earth's land is already used up for agriculture. Estimates show that more than one-third of all agricultural lands would need to be converted to biofuel production in order to raise its share in domestic consumption of transport fuels to 10%.
Increased production of biofuels on a commercial scale and expansion of agricultural areas will substantively increase the demand for water for agricultural purposes, which is already consuming 93% of the world's available fresh water supply and benefiting from 66% of the world's total water withdrawals. Already, the amount of water required for food production is projected to increase from 60 to 90% in the next 50 years, especially if there is no improvement in water productivity. Add to that figure the demand for biofuels production and the consequences of climate change on the world's water supply and distribution, and the world should brace itself for another global crisis in the offing.
In the competition between food and fuel, the poor, who have limited access to and control over land and who have to fight for water in many cases, are bound to lose.