Biofuels, touted as one of the great competitors to the oil and gas industry, are coming under international criticism for adversely affecting world food supplies.
"The more biofuels the [European Union] produces, the more it will be forced to import vegetable oils from the rest of the world," said Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food.
De Schutter was in Brussels last week urging the EU to rethink its biofuels policy, saying that huge errors had been committed in the initial enthusiasm for an alternative to fossil fuels.
"We may have to fundamentally rethink this policy," De Schutter said, especially since biofuels "are not an efficient way of reducing greenhouse gases."
Adverse effects
De Schutter took especial aim at the EU's plan to produce 10% of its energy from renewables by 2020, a plan which has triggered massive investments in African land in order to produce sugar or sweet potatoes for biofuels.
This is hardly the first time that De Schutter has spoken out about the adverse effects of biofuels. In October, he took on the Group of 20's decision to put food security at the top of its agenda.
"The G20 made an important statement of intent by placing food security at the top of its agenda," he said. But he noted that it is not enough to agree such a plan without addressing the issue of biofuels.
"The G20 must put an end to public biofuel mandates and fiscal subsidies, which are a major factor in rising food prices and an important driver of the rush towards farmland in developing countries," De Schutter said.
"Leaders are yet to prove that they heard the joint recommendations of international organizations 5 months ago, which urged G20 governments to stop subsidizing biofuels," he said.
"It is not enough to name-check the issue—the G20 must put the human right to food before the vested interests of some of its industries," he added.
Subsidies decried
De Schutter is hardly alone in his criticism, with a recent report also critical of US and EU subsidies of biofuel production as an alternative to oil.
"This is encouraging farmers to shift their production to biofuel crops, such as maize, that never make it to the dinner table," according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI), which noted that global biofuel subsidies reached $20 billion in 2009.
Not least, the GHI report noted that the US accounts for 50% of global corn exports and that those exports decline accordingly as more corn crops go into the production of biofuels.
It's clearly official: increased production of biofuels is fueling greater hunger around the globe.
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