Land vital for food crops in developing countries is being turned over to grow biofuels, invariably for export
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This year began with record-breaking food prices that experts warn could lead to another fully fledged global food crisis. Rising food prices contributed to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and sparked riots in several other countries. A food crisis three years ago also brought impoverished people on to the streets when they couldn't afford to buy staple foods such as rice, wheat and corn. Not surprising when poor people spend up to 80% of their income on food.
The World Bank estimates that between June and December 2010 an additional 44 million people fell below the poverty line due to rises in food prices. The bank's president, Robert Zoellick, called for the world to 'put food first'.
There are numerous causes to the recent price rises, but biofuels remain a significant piece of the puzzle. About 40% of US corn goes into biofuels. Today, 18% of biofuels now used in the UK are made from wheat and corn that are staple foods in the developing world. Yet just over a year ago, the UK hardly used either of these.
This demand can do nothing but drive food prices higher. And the demand is only set to grow. The EU alone is planning to more than double the amount of biofuels it uses in the next 10 years.
It's not just NGOs such as ActionAid that have raised the alarm. Recently, 10 international organisations – among them five UN agencies, the IMF, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – warned that biofuels will exert considerable upward pressure on food prices in the future. This is unacceptable when around 1 billion people go hungry every day.
What happens at the global level impacts heavily at national and local level. Take Kenya, which is a net importer of food. Its food import bill has risen, often meaning higher national and local prices – a disastrous situation when most rural and urban poor are net buyers of food.
But the drive for more biofuels to fuel vehicles and power stations in rich countries is having another, more localised effect. Companies are scouring the globe for land to meet biofuel targets. There is simply not enough land in the rich world to cater for the new demand; where better to look than in the developing world, particularly Africa where land is supposedly abundant and cheap.
So land vital for food crops in developing countries is being turned over to grow biofuels, invariably for export. Less food is planted as farmers go to work on biofuel plantations in anticipation of jobs and better incomes, which often do not materialise.
ActionAid with other local partners in Kenya has recently highlighted the potential impacts of a proposed 50,000 hectare jatropha plantation in the country's coastal region. This is just one of at least five massive biofuel plantations that ActionAid is aware of in this part of the country.
The plantation could displace around 20,000 people who have lived in the forest and the surrounding areas for generations. They grow food on small plots outside the forest to feed their families and sell at the local market. Gertrude Kadzo, 37, a farmer, said: 'If we are evicted to make way for the plantation, my community will have no place to go. This is land where we grow cassava, corn and pineapples.'
When global food prices fell in 2008 and food insecurity was no longer front-page news, political interest faltered. This time world leaders must act. They should take their lead from the warnings by the 10 international institutions about the consequences of biofuels on food prices. They called for biofuel targets and subsidies to be scrapped. This is what ActionAid has been demanding for many years.
• Tim Rice is a biofuels policy adviser at ActionAid
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