Recently Fidel Castro has come out of his illness-related exile firing, with a swipe at US biofuel policies, describing it as the internationalisation of genocide.
He’s right.
Mass use of biofuels is a disastrous idea. Here’s a simple example. In the UK, 37.8 million tonnes of petroleum products are consumed each year. Their most productive oil is rapeseed. In order to produce 37.8 million tonnes, they require just under 26 million hectares of land. Unfortunately there’s just over 5 million hectares of arable land available in the entire country.
Of course, the problem will be exported to developing countries. Since the rich countries can pay hard cash for their fuel, which poor countries would struggle to match for food, it’s obvious what will happen. Arable land in developing countries will be used to grow fuel for the wealthy. It’s the free market talking after all.
Let’s follow the trail. Who is pushing biofuels most strongly? Biotech companies. The same entities which have opposed tobacco legislation and genetic modification legislation are pushing the mass uptake of biofuels. Since biofuels will not be used as food, there will be a lot less opposition to the use of GMO crops for fuel than there is for food. A guaranteed source of vast wealth for a few organisations, who’re doing all they can to push policy (especially in compliant countries such as the US) in this direction.
Opposition to Castro’s comment has been muted. One comment came from the Brazilian foreign minister. Brazil produces the greatest proportion of its fuel from biofuels, in its case sugar-cane derived ethanol, and has just concluded an agreement with the US on ethanol production. Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, claimed that Castro’s views were outdated because the whole world is heading in the direction of ethanol, which as good an example of non-existent logic as you can imagine.
A more nuanced criticism came from an adviser to the Brazilian president, Marco Aurelio Garcia, who said that food insecurity was caused by a lack of income, not a lack of food worldwide, adding that Brazil’s food production would not be harmed by an increase in biofuel production.
It’s precisely the lack of income (in other terms, disparity in wealth) that will be exacerbated by a move to biofuels. While Brazil’s food production may not be affected (and sugar cane is one of the better source of biofuels, rather than a food crop such as maize, used in the US), the same can’t be said globally.
Otherwise, the silence has been deafening. Most environmentalists have been beating the same drum for a while, but money talks, and policy decisions (including in South Africa) continue to lead us down this dead end.
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Tags: fidel+castro biofuel ethanol GMO brazil
Yep, thanks to the perceived enviroment-friendliness of biofuel the biotech companies now have another angle of attack. Syngenta in South Africa was recently refused the right to grow its “maize event 3 272” which is meant for biofuel production because of food-safety concerns, but will the Executive Council on GMO hold out in future?