Why Agrofuels?

Why Agrofuels?
Agrofuels are liquid fuels made from biomass, which consists of crops and trees grown specifically for that purpose on a large scale. This term is used to be clear that our opposition is to the growing of crops and trees including corn, oilseed rape, sugarcane, soybeans and oil palms on an industrial scale for fuel. We support individuals and companies solely involved in the re-cycling of waste oils like chip-fat into biofuel and communities using biomass sustainably and on a small-scale, as do many rural communities in the glob al South.
Most agrofuel crops are grown on large monocultures, controlled largely by a small number of large agribusiness firms, in partnership with oil companies, biotech firms, car manufacturers and venture capital companies. They rely on industrial agriculture, which is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity losses. Small farmers, forest communities, pastoralists and other communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America are being pushed off their land or forced to grow crops for cars, mostly in the North, including in the UK.
The agrofuel market is an artificial market, created by governments, including the EU and the US. Through mandatory targets for biofuel blending, tax rebates and direct subsidies, the industry has been guaranteed an ever growing market [1]. As a result of those policies, companies, banks and venture capitalists have started to invest tens of billions of dollars in refineries, new plantations and research and development for new types of agrofuel. Despite growing awareness and evidence of the serious impacts of agrofuels, there are no signs of any meaningful change in policy in Europe or the US. And the impacts of the investment being made now will be irreversible.
Agrofuels and climate change
Agrofuels mean more industrial agriculture and more monocultures. Both are major drivers of climate change, and it is not surprising therefore that scientific studies show that, far from reducing global warming, agrofuels are making it worse.
Industrial agriculture demands high fossil fuels inputs. According to the Stern Review [2], it is responsible for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that does not even include the fossil fuel burning for farm machinery or for producing fertilisers or pesticides. Industrial monocultures are also the main driver of deforestation and other ecosystem destruction. The Stern Review estimates that deforestation accounts for another 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. Soya is the main driver of forest destruction in the Amazon and palm oil is the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. On top of this, large amounts of carbon are released from the soil, including from drained peatlands. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global emissions from destroying peatlands are even greater than those from deforestation [3].
Every acre of land put into agrofuels production means, if food production is to remain the same, that an acre of land must be cleared of natural vegetation. This process of land-clearing releases 17-420 times the annual amount of carbon saved by producing the agrofuels, meaning that over a time-span of decades to centuries agrofuels are accelerating climate change, not mitigating it [4]. Forests, grasslands, wetlands and other ecosystems hold many hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon. If land is converted to agriculture, carbon stored in the vegetation and soil is released to the atmosphere. Climate change is made worse not just because of those carbon emissions: Biodiverse ecosystems are essential for regulating the global climate and this includes regulating rainfall and storm patterns on which global food production depends.
Even agrofuels produced in the UK are anything but climate-friendly: A study by nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that the total emissions linked to rapeseed biodiesel are up to 70% higher than those from ordinary diesel, because of the large amounts of nitrate fertilisers involved. At the same time, using rapeseed oil for cars means that the gap in the food and cosmetics markets is now being filled by palm oil with the same impact as using palm oil for biodiesel directly.
In the UK, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced in April this year, requires first 2.5% and, from 2010, 5% of all transport fuel to come from biofuels. Given that no agrofuels can be shown to be climate-friendly, it is hardly surprising that the UK government does not require biofuels to result in greenhouse gas reductions nor to be in any way sustainable in order to qualify under the RTFO, at least until 2011.
Land for food or for fuel?
Global food prices have risen by 75% on average in the past year and UN officials have warned that 100 million more people’s lives are at risk. Even in the UK, poorer people are struggling ever more to afford a healthy diet. The Special UN Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Oliver de Schutter has called for an immediate halt to all agrofuel investment, calling European and US biofuel policies ‘irresponsible’. His predecessor, Jean Ziegler, had called agrofuels ‘a crime against humanity’ [5]. Bolivian President Evo Morales has also spoken out against Europe’s agrofuel policies, saying "This is very serious. How important is life and how important are cars? So I say life first and cars second." [6]
Agrofuels are one important reason behind the food price crisis: last year, 100 million tonnes of food were turned into agrofuels. Wheat prices are at record levels – yet in the UK six large wheat ethanol refineries expected to open in the near future, which will burn nearly 5 million tonnes of wheat per year. Tens of millions of hectares of land are being turned into agrofuel plantations, and productive, sustainable farming systems are being destroyed. Farmland which is not yet controlled by agribusiness is classed as ‘marginal’ or ‘degraded’ and earmarked for agrofuels. In India, for example, there are plans to turn 13 million hectares of so-called ‘marginal land’ into jatropha plantations for biodiesel. Yet millions of people depend on this land for their livelihoods and food. [7]
Agrofuels are handing more power and control to large agribusness and oil companies, which rake in high profits from rising food prices. As people are forced to compete with cars for land and food, ADM, Cargill, Bunge and other large corporations have seen their profits grow by as much as 67% in one year. More corporate control over food markets means more speculation, driving up prices yet higher.
Agrofuels do not just mean higher food prices, but also large-scale displacement of people, often involving violent evictions. According the Chair of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 60 million indigenous people are likely to become ‘biofuel refugees’ [8].
Many social movements, such as Via Campesina, have declared the food crisis a ‘People’s State of Emergency’ and demand an immediate halt to agrofuel developments, as well as wider shift away from liberalised food markets and agri-business control, towards food sovereignty [9]. Food sovereignty means local, democratic community control over land and water, over food and seeds, working with, not against nature and thus protecting climate, biodiversity, water and soil, and putting people’s right to food above other economic interests.
Notes:
[1] The EU Biofuel Directive sets a a 5.75% target for biofuel use in transport fuel by 2010. A new 10% target by 2020 is currently being debated. The US Renewable Fuel Standard mandates a five-fold increase in biofuel use by 2022, to 36 billion gallons per year.
[2] www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climat...
[3] IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 3 “Summary for Policy Makers”, p.4, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-spm.pdf
[4] Fargione, J. et al. 2008. Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt. Science, Issue 319, Pages 1235-1238.
[5] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/7381392.stm
[6] The Guardian 22 April 2008. Biofuels starving our people, leaders tell UN,
Allegra Stratton
[7] See ‘Agrofuels in India – private unlimited’, Grain, http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=543 and ‘People’s Statement on Climate Change’ Tamil Nadu Environment Council and EQUATIONS, December 2007, http://cedatrust.in/html/climate.pdf
[8] “Civil Society statement on the World Food Emergency No More “Failures-as-Usual", May 2008, http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/images/stories/pdf/22-05-2008_csofoo...
[9] http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/2007-05-15/Biofuel_crops_threaten...