With the world’s reserves of oil going down, governments and companies have started looking for alternatives. A global market for bio-fuels has been developing during the past ten years, which was one of the factors that contributed to the sharp increase in food prices in 2008.
Since then, the cultivation of crops for bio-fuels, such as jatropha, has been a hot topic in the international development debate. Are bio-fuels an opportunity for small-scale farming?
Opponents of the development of a bio-fuel sector make us believe that cultivation of fuel crops is radically different from agriculture as we know it. But why? Farmers don’t really mind if their cash crop is cassava, tobacco, soy, coffee or jatropha. If jatropha pays better than coffee, the farmer will shift to jatropha. Should farmers only grow crops for food? Should we also ban cotton?
A major part of the food crops produced today is not consumed by humans. More than 40% of world grain production is fed to animals, and this is increasing rapidly with the growth in meat consumption. The resources allocated to bio-fuels are small in comparison.
Many studies, such as FAO’s 2009 report, “Small-scale bioenergy initiatives”, have concluded that bio-fuel production can be beneficial to small-scale farmers. It is true that bio-fuels have contributed to increasing food prices, which is particularly problematic for the many people who are dependent on cheap food. But food prices have been low primarily because developed countries have subsidised their farms for decades. This has made farming in developing countries a miserable way to earn a living, which has prompted young rural people to move out to the city – where they end up in slums. Higher prices for agricultural products are good for farmers in the long term, and bio-fuels remain an interesting option for breaking this negative spiral.
While agro-corporations grab land for bio-fuel production, this is a separate problem that emerges because there is now an agricultural commodity that fetches a reasonable price, and therefore attracts entrepreneurs and investors. If we ban bio-fuels to reduce land-grabbing then the logical consequence is that we ban any crop that is attractive to entrepreneurs, and condemn farmers to eternal poverty.
Obviously this is absurd: landgrabbing is a political and juridical problem that needs to be dealt with outside the discussion about bio-fuels.
Small-scale farmers should have the option to choose bio-fuels to develop their farming. Let them decide for themselves what makes sense to them.
Text: Flemming Nielsen
Flemming Nielsen can be reached at fnielsen[at]bananahill.net
Flemming Nielsen has been developing options for smallscale farming in Africa for two decades, and now works for the FACT Foundation.
As part of the word “biofuels”, the prefix “bio” has a false positive connotation, implying a solution to the depletion of fossil fuels and to climate change.
As we are talking about oil from agricultural crops, I prefer the word “agro-fuel” – and then their positive image disappears.
Agro-fuel corporations present Africa as a sick continent that has vast “marginal” lands waiting to be put to use. For example, industry claims that jatropha does well on degraded lands, such as those found in Swaziland, where a company, D1 Oils plc, told farmers that jatropha does not need water to bring income. It did not take too long for them to find out the bitter truth: that they not only need expensive chemicals, but also to divert water from their food crops.
In Ghana I recently spoke to farmers who feared a land use change from food cropping to agro-fuels production. And it’s the industry who determines prices. African governments and local chiefs now hand over land to corporations, which turn it into large-scale fuel production fields for the export market. This is land where local people used to graze their animals or grow locally adapted crops.
Farmers and pastoralists now risk becoming refugees in their own regions. In the process, GM giants are lining up with oil companies and contaminating our cassava and potato fields. The former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, classified agrofuels as a “crime against humanity”. Ironically, the contribution of agrofuels to the world’s energy supply is marginal: the entire 2005 soy and maize harvest in the United States could have only replaced 12% of the country’s fossil fuel demands.
Who really benefits from allotting poor people’s land to the production of fuels for cars? The answer is clear. History has proven time and again that such “innovations” benefit corporations, while communities are left hungry and impoverished. I do not dispute the use of agro-fuels for their use within a community, as happens in Mali, where communities grow jatropha in hedges to meet domestic energy needs. But, all in all, the earth is too small to cultivate agro-fuels on a large scale. Our governments should scrape all agro-fuels targets and enforce international moratoriums on exports. Agro-fuels are a false solution that threaten the livelihoods of millions of poor people.
Text: Mariann Bassey
Mariann Bassey can be reached at
mariann[at]eraction.org
Mariann Bassey is the food and agriculture co-ordinator for Environmental Rights Action / Friends of the Earth Nigeria.
