Biofuels and Food Security

I've been reading the UN report Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers and have been overwhelmed by the complexities of the issues.

Since the report is 60 pages and pretty dense, I'm going to focus on the implications for food security in these reflections.

The basic challenge is how to make the these three things - food, feed, and fuel - work together. (The report doesn't list fiber, as it might, or we'd be talking about the four Fs of crops.)

One thing I learned: as development increases, there is an increased demand for dairy and meat, which increases the need for animal feed production, thus causing even greater competition among the 3 Fs when we look at the global picture. Already 30% of the world grain supply is used to feed livestock.

Another framework to think about: food security involves four major dimensions: availability of enough food, access, particularly for low income people, stability of the food supply over time, and utilization, meaning people's ability to use the nutrients in the available food.

If land, water and other resources are used to produce biofuels rather than food, availability could diminish.

If the use of food crops for biofuels (corn) increases, commodity prices will increase, making these crops less accessible to the poor. And the poor depend on cereals and the like for most of their calories.

But it's also true that growing biofuel feedstocks could improve the income of rural folks and thus contribute to better food access. This may come into play more with second generation biofuels (not ethanol).

Stability is an interesting one. Apparently, and this makes sense to me as I thought about it, prices for biofuels move with petroleum prices. So volatility in biofuel prices could be one more variable affecting the agriculture sector, even when the agriculture in question is not dependent on inputs from fossil fuels. And of course, if you have less money and no wealth, as the poor do, you have a lot harder time adjusting to rapid shifts in prices.

Utilization is dependent on other health factors, particularly water supplies. Where biofuel feedstock production competes for water, health of people in those areas could be threatened.

BUT - if biofuels replace more expensive and more polluting fuels locally, cooking could be more efficient, and food utilization greater.

All this is just a taste of the no-simple-answers content of this paper.

Factoid - no - metafactoid: Even though the percentage of hungry people in the world has declined, the number has stayed the same. More people around the world die of hunger than of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

What are the new philanthropists doing about global hunger?

It appears that one key piece of biofuel development will involve how quickly we can move to the second generation of biofuels - away from the liquid biofuels being produced in quantity today.

There are even some possibilities of positive synergy, for example, if nitrogen fixing legumes used for biofuels production were to be rotated with food crops - enriching the soil over time. On the other hand, there could be a push to plow up rangelands and the like , to plant switchgrass and other proposed crops, with the attendant environmental damage. And, of course, those rangelands can feed livestock without additional feed, so the pressure on raising feed for meat would be greater.

Clearly a lot of analysis needs to happen to model and undertand the effects of biofuel production on food security. Will policy makers - in governments and global corporations - take the time to do this? know how to do this? care enough about the poor to do this? There is also a need to come up not with one plan or solution, but with a range of schemes that will suit different contexts, cultures, and environments.

Here's a loaded sentence from the report:

"Agricultural research aimed at improving productivity, conserving water, and building soil fertility can lessen the tension between food, feed, and fuel production by increasing overall agricultural output in a sustainable manner."

But will the research (increased funding for biofuel research is proposed for the Farm Bill) on biofuels proceed with sustainability as the highest value? or growth and profit?

And will the research funding be directed at small scale local possibilities - or only integrated agribusiness?

Silly footnote: When I was making some notes on "biofuels" in wordperfect, the spell check suggested "beefaloes" as the proper spelling. Let's use that rangeland for ruminants!