Monday, June 02, 2008
Biofuel Land Demand Puts Peasants at Risk: Report
ROME - The rise of biofuels is not only adding to the global food price crisis but also poses a risk for peasants, pushed off their land to make way for energy crops, a report prepared for this week’s food summit said.
The use of food such as maize, palm oil and sugar to produce fuel has been blamed in part for record high commodity prices which are driving millions of people into hunger, and will be a key issue discussed by world leaders at the Rome summit.
Condemned as a “crime against humanity” last year by the then U.N. food rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, critics of biofuels say they divert nutrition away from mouths and into fuel tanks and compete for land that should be used to grow food.
Both the United States and the European Union have policies promoting the use of biofuels as alternatives as a way to reduce reliance on crude oil.
The report, published on Monday by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that hosts the three-day summit from Tuesday, flagged up several social and environmental risks of biofuels, but said they were not the main cause of the food crisis.
“Recent hikes in world food prices have not been caused primarily by biofuels,” it said, listing the main reasons for the price hikes as poor harvests, low stocks and rising demand in Asia for food and fodder.
Co-written by the FAO and the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development and (IIED), the report, “Fuelling exclusion? The biofuels boom and poor people’s access to land”, said the biofuels boom was a major threat to millions of peasants.
Mentioned Report
High-Level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy
