Brazil's Lula Rebuffs Biofuels Critics at World Food Summit
by Eliza Barclay, Nomad on 06. 4.08
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday told off critics who have accused Brazil of reducing food production in favor of ethanol, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Instead, Lula says record oil prices and rich countries' farm subsidies are to blame for soaring world food prices.
"Biofuels are not the villain menacing food security in poor countries," Lula said at a global summit in Rome on world food security. "They can play an important role in the economic and social development of developing countries."
Various analysts, including many members of the environmental community, have noted that biofuel crop cultivation is responsible for about one-third of the increase in global food prices that have catalyzed riots in more than 30 countries. But Lula told the summit that cultivation of sugar cane for ethanol accounts for just 1 percent of Brazil's 340 million hectares of arable land.
Plantations in Brazil, the world's biggest producer of ethanol from sugar cane, haven't encroached on land used for food cultivation or on the Amazon rainforest, he asserted.
"Subsidies create dependency, break down entire production systems and provoke hunger and poverty. It is high time to do away with them,'' Lula stated. "It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels—fingers tainted with oil and coal." US corn-based ethanol is an example of a harmful type of biofuel "shot up with subsidies and shielded behind tariff barriers," Lula added. :: Via Bloomberg
See also posts on Biofuels: When Subsidies and Special Interests Collide, Land Use and Biofuels , and the Biofuels Comparison Chart.
I've been amazed at how the public has fallen for this anti-biofuel propaganda. It's Big Oil propaganda, check the numbers (and the politics). There is more food on the market than ever before. The only crop short in the food market is soy. There is a surplus of food that will be destroyed since it can't get to those that need it. Besides, if we use all agriculture for food, in another 5 years the population will outgrow it and the complaints will start rolling in - not about the population, but the food supply.
"NIMBY" always comes up when something new is to be built, but we rarely remember that it applies when talking about the sources of problems. It can't be the biofuels because my country needs biofuels. It can't be farm subsidies because my farmers need subsidies. It can't be the cost of fertilizers going up with the price of oil. It can't be overconsumption in the west. It can't be the monoculture is breaking down.
An alternative mindset is to see how each source contributes to the whole problem and what can be achieved by changing what each piece does.
That's not entirely true anonymous. Biofuels from food sources will limit the the world food supply. It's not complicated at all. As food sources are used for biofuel there is less leftover food to be distributed for other sources, plain and simple.
Ditto Anne, and I wish more people looked into issues that way.
Really we need to promote and invest into research that leads to machines able to breakdown organic waste into biofuel mass. This would be more better and more efficient than growing crops for biofuel.
I love when people says that any one that is against biofuels is buying into Big Oil propaganda,
I say that anyone who supports biofuels is buying into Big Oil propaganda, After all it is the oil companies that are going to be producing most of the biofuels or fuel alternatives.
The answer is not another kind of fuel. But instead solar and battery technology.
In case you haven't noticed the ethanol is being sold bt THE OIL COMPANIES!!!
When it comes to biofuels, I am happy for any bad propaganda... Because ultimately they will so a lot of environmental damage (coastal dead zones due to excess algae growing on fertlizer run off, eradication of ecosystems to grow crops to fuel cars and at the end of the day, its plain inefficient - an awful lot of plant material grown just so someone can drive...).
But I also agree with Lula that subsidies are awful and I'm sure they are contributing - somehow... If biofuels aren't economic in the US without subsidies, then it is pointless using them. And I can never ever understand why subsidies should be allowed other than possibly an incentive to get things moving in the first place. But the subsidies that exist on food in the US and Europe? Wrong, wrong wrong and not just for the environment but the whole global community.
The second generation biofuels currently coming online use weeds and wastes as feedstocks and require minimum cultivation. Some examples are cellulosic ethanol from perennial prairie grasses and wood waste, and biodiesel from waste greases and microalgae.
For the latest on first and second generation biofuels, and their costs and consequences, go to the BioWeb at www.bioweb.sungrant.org.
BioWeb is a free, peer-reviewed educational website bringing together university and government Bioenergy research.
Joelle Brink
Sungrant BioWeb
University of Tennessee