'2008 – The Year of Food Riots'
flashes across news headlines, as hungry people are taking to the streets in more than 70 countries, protesting the high price of food.
Higher food costs result from many factors, such as drought, reduced grain reserves, and higher demand from population growth. A major factor, however, is increased production of food crops to feed cars not people. At the start of the decade, a small amount of grain – 18 million tonnes – was used for industrial purposes. This year 100 million tonnes will go towards agrofuels and other industrial purposes.
American cars now burn enough maize to meet all the import needs of the 82 countries classified as ‘low‐income food‐deficit’ by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. As one commentator remarked, ‘there could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.'
Because the demand for agrofuels seems to be insatiable, more global corporations are looking at Africa in a different way, not seeing the hungry, but rather, noticing the extensive land mass and calling Africa the ‘green OPEC’.
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But is this land ‘available’ for fuel production?
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What are the impacts of fuel crop production on food crops?
A basic problem is that industrialised countries have set ‘green’ targets for agrofuel consumption which they cannot fulfill with their own local production. For Europe to grow crops for its ethanol targets, it would take 70% of its farmland, for the USA, 43%. Fulfilling ‘green’ goals, therefore, very much depends on industrialised countries taking command of land in South countries in order to grow agrofuel crops.
The amount of land under discussion for agrofuel crop production in Africa is massive: over 2 million hectares in Mozambique, 1–2 million hectares in Ethiopia, and even 3 million hectares discussed as ‘available’ in tiny Benin.
No matter how much land is allocated, however, its use will be overwhelmingly for foreign consumption. Such major tracts of land designated to meet foreigners’ transport needs signals, once again, the expatriation of African lands. Export crops for overseas consumption while Africans go hungry is a historical pattern all too familiar on the continent; it is certainly not the hope of 21st century African agriculture.
For efficiency, the current producers of agrofuels use monoculture plantations for maize, soya, and sugar, maximising fertiliser and water inputs for high yields. For crops, such as jatropha, most often planted on the fringes of marginal land, the planting patterns would have to drastically change to large‐scale monoculture in order to grow sufficient feedstock.
High yields are necessary because of the massive amount of plant material needed for fuel. WorldWatch Institute offers the comparison that the amount of grain required to fill the 90‐litre petrol tank of a 4x4 vehicle once with ethanol could feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every two weeks over a year would feed 26 people.
Requiring high yields also gives impetus to the industries wanting to profit from genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which could not take off in the global marketplace as food (maize, soya, canola), but seek to find new life in the agrofuel market. The plans are to genetically modify cassava to a higher sugar content and to genetically modify other plants so their cellulose composition can be more easily broken down to extract the liquids. These GMOs, grown on vast tracts of land, will genetically pollute indigenous strains, altering their characteristics as well as contributing to the loss of biodiversity.
What are the implications of global agrofuel production on African lands?
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Loss of Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Making hungry children compete with cars for food draws a clear image of loss of food security. As the continent of Africa strives to reduce hunger, the global corporations see plentiful land -millions of hectares – free for the taking? Agrofuels therefore directly threaten the human right to food;
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Loss of Biodiversity: Although biodiversity is the future of food, especially with global warming, agrofuels value only monoculture;
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GM Contamination: Introducing plantation production of genetically modified trees or cassava, sorghum, or maize will contaminate local varieties and destroy biodiversity;
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Threat to Small‐Scale Farmers: Industrial production of agrofuels enhances the agricultural model which pushes small‐scale farmers aside as ‘inefficient’ and ‘insufficient’ producers. If plantation farming is the model, rural communities will once again become workers for foreign corporations which export the product and the profits;
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Anti‐Development: Africa has much experience with production of tobacco, cotton or cut flowers for global markets. A few become rich, but there is no development, for the export of unprocessed commodities does not create new industries or many jobs. Plantation agrofuels would perpetuate this pattern.
Many African civil society organisations are calling for a moratorium on agrofuel investment and production. The real costs must first be transparently debated by all.
Excerpted from a report, that has full references: Carol B. Thompson (2008), ‘Agrofuels for Africa?,’ Community Technology Development Trust (Harare), May.