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FOOD-BIOFUELS Apr-24-2008 (590 words) xxxi
Rising food prices highlight controversy over biofuels
By Barbara J. Fraser
Catholic News Service
LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- Recent protests over rising food prices have highlighted the controversy over biofuels such as ethanol made from corn or diesel fuel made from vegetable oils.
Both the United States and Europe have pledged to increase biofuel use, and about 30 percent of U.S. corn production this year will be used for ethanol, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.
Calculating the exact impact of biofuel production on food price hikes is difficult. Despite the attention to biofuels as a factor in recent price increases, it probably had less of an impact than drought and other factors, said Lisa Kuennen of Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency.
Siwa Msangi, a research fellow at the food policy institute, said a recent study found that between 25 percent and 33 percent of the increase in food prices between 2000 and 2006 "seems to be driven by the biofuels effect."
Father Varghese Mattamana, executive director of Caritas India, the Catholic Church's aid organization, said "any diversion of land from food or feed production to production of energy biomass will influence food prices, as both compete for the same input."
In a report released in December, the International Food Policy Research Institute warned that "world cereal and energy prices are becoming increasingly linked." Wheat and petroleum prices have tripled since 2000, while corn and rice prices have nearly doubled.
The institute said if countries that produce biofuels maintain their current level of investment in these products international corn prices will increase by 26 percent, and the prices of vegetable oil seeds will rise by 18 percent. If the current level of production is doubled, corn prices could rise by 72 percent and oil seeds by 44 percent, the report said.
World leaders are split on how to respond to the issue. Addressing a U.N. meeting on indigenous people and climate change last September, Bolivian President Evo Morales said that using food crops for fuel harms the world's most impoverished people.
The European Union has set a goal of making 10 percent of its vehicle fuel from crops by 2020. On April 22, one day after European leaders reiterated that pledge, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that if his country sees proof that biofuels are pushing food prices up it will change its biofuel targets.
Some experts say that one solution is to switch to other biofuel sources. Brazil produces ethanol from sugar cane, although critics say the cane fields are displacing soy and cattle ranches and worry that more of the Amazon rain forest will be cleared as a result.
Ethanol from grass or crop waste like corn stalks is still some years away, experts say.
The food-biofuel trade-off "is a moral question of priorities," said Jesuit Father Peter Henriot, director of the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Lusaka, Zambia.
"The need for biofuel must be weighed against the impact on the production of food, which is essential to people's survival, as well as the fact that alternative sources of energy are available, such as solar and thermal energy," he said.
People also must make lifestyle changes to conserve energy by switching to cars and appliances that use less fuel, he said.
The "key question is that resources for food must take priority over resources for fuel," Father Henriot said.
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Contributing to this story were Anto Akkara in India and Bronwen Dachs in South Africa.
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Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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