UN Calls for Five Year Biofuel Moratorium

14 October, 2007 08:00:00

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Switzerland's Jean Ziegler, The United Nations Special Reporter on the Right to Food is demanding an international five-year ban on producing biofuels to combat soaring food prices.

He said the conversion of arable land for plants used for green fuel had led to an explosion of agricultural prices which was punishing poor countries forced to import their food at a greater cost.

Corn has about doubled in price during the last year, thanks to an increasing demand for ethanol — the mostly corn-based alternative fuel that burns cleaner than oil and, ideally, could one day reduce American dependence on oil imports. (According to our survey more than 90% of Americans are seeing ethanol as our future green fuel)

"232kg of corn is needed to make 50 litres of ethanol," Ziegler said. "A child could live on that amount of corn for a year."

Using land for biofuels would result in "massacres", he said, predicting a reduction in the amount of food aid sent to developing countries by richer ones.

"It's a total disaster for those who are starving."

Ziegler's proposal for a five-year moratorium, which he plans to submit to the UN General Assembly on October 25, is aiming to ban the conversion of land for the production of biofuels.

Ziegler said he hoped that by the time the moratorium was lifted science would have made sufficient progress to be able to create "second generation" biofuels, made from agricultural waste or from non-agricultural plants such as jatropha, which grows naturally on arid ground.

Only two years ago, with the twin specters of peak oil prices and climate change looming, biofuels seemed the ideal alternative energy.

Now it is the poor who have to contend with the flip side of biofuels: spiraling cereal prices, say experts.

But not only the poor.

If you're a dairy farmer in the US, the higher corn prices are no cause for celebration.

Cows are animals that just love to eat corn feed -- corn protein helps produce better milk. But the higher corn prices mean that a diary farmer has to pay almost double this year for the corn feed they gives his cows.

Some farmers say they may well have to reduce their herd, which means "there'll be less milk produced because of the price of corn. That's the bottom line."

It gets more complicated.

Pigs, chickens, turkeys’ steers all are fed a mix of corn feed too. As a result, you guessed it; the price for those items will be rising at the supermarket.

More and more corn is being used for biofuel at the expense of food, according to Jean Ziegler

Environmental impact

A study commissioned by the Swiss authorities in May also concluded that biofuels might not be the panacea for the world's fossil-fuel woes.

Such fuels, touted as an ecologically friendly source of energy, might be more harmful for the environment than their fossil counterparts, it said.

According to the authors, while it was true that biofuels might emit less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels when consumed, producing them was generally more stressful on the environment.

Similar study says that switching from gasoline to ethanol - touted as a green alternative at the pump - may create dirtier air, causing slightly more smog-related deaths.

"It's not green in terms of air pollution," said study author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor. "If you want to use ethanol, fine, but don't do it based on health grounds."

His study, based on a computer model, is published in online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology and adds to the messy debate over ethanol.

Growing and processing crops for energy purposes or feedstock can have the heaviest environmental impact, as soil quality can be affected adversely, for example through fertilizer overuse.

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