According to Greek mythology, Dionysus, a Greek god, offered King Midas to make a choice of the reward he wanted. King Midas
asked Dionysus to bless him with powers to transform everything into gold upon his touch. As desired, the King got his new powers and he began touching everything to see if it transforms to gold. King Midas was overjoyed to see his new powers working and thus, asked his servants to arrange a grand feast at home. In the feast, when the king held his food to eat and water to drink, they started to grow rigid and turn into gold. King Midas began hating the coveted gift that turned even his food and water into gold upon his touch. He started praying Dionysus to relieve him from starvation.
The above mentioned story is similar to the growing trend in bio-fuel production. Many developed and developing nations, like King Midas, in their pursuit to be powerful and self-reliant, are converting their arable lands and forests into bio-fuel crops. Like the King who did not realize the gift as a bane until starvation, these countries have failed to foresee the effects of increased bio-fuel production until the global food shortage.
Before we discuss the role of bio-fuel production in world food crisis, it is important to know few facts about bio-fuel crops. Bio-fuels are produced from biomass, which is any organic material extracted from plants and animals including by-products such as cow dung and crop residues. Vegetable oil, bio-diesel, bio-alcohol, butanol, bio-ethanol and bio-methanol are different kinds of bio-fuel produced in many countries from biomass of various agricultural products such as, maize and soybean in the USA; wheat, rapeseed, sugar beet in Europe; sugarcane in Brazil; palm oil in South East Asia; and jatropha, pongemia, sugar beet in India.
These agricultural crops meant for human and animal consumption are transformed into agri-fuels. This is effecting hungry people across the globe. On one hand, millions of people in poor nations are struggling to fill their stomach and on the other hand, rich nations are using food grains to fill their vehicles with fuel. However, countries that produce bio-fuel crops consider it a viable solution in increasing the security of fuel as an alternative to fossil fuel. According to them, bio-fuels are carbon-neutral, green, eco-friendly and thus, decrease greenhouse gas emissions and also, decrease poverty in developing countries by generating new employment opportunities in the large bio-fuel processing units. While these countries may have reaped few quick benefits in the initial years, the after effects took some time to crop up.
For instance, U.S.A. wants to decrease 75% of its oil imports by 2025 through Ethanol production, which requires corn or high-starched grains. It is encouraging it’s farmers to produce crops like maize and soybean by providing subsidies to them. U.S.A. has achieved an output of 335 million tonnes of maize harvest in 2007 which is over a quarter higher than last year’s output and is producing 4 billion gallons bio-fuel per year, 90% of which comes from Ethanol extracted from maize. This was achieved by replacing a chunk of barley cultivation with that of maize. Undoubtedly, this has resulted in shortage of supply of maize and also doubled its price since 2000.
Similarly, many nations are diverting land previously used for production of food crops to that of bio-fuel crops. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are cutting their forests and wetlands to bring more arable land under cultivation of bio-fuel crops. This is encouraging deforestation in many parts of the world.
A study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicated that large scale production of bio-fuels in developing countries with weak pro-poor policies and lack of women empowerment, could increase marginalization of women in rural areas, thus threaten their livelihoods. Rural women, mostly small farmers, in developing countries are suffering losses due to limited access to water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides which are intensively used for bio-fuel crop production. This can result in increasing women’s vulnerability to poverty, hunger and gender inequalities in these countries. Besides, intensive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides for bio-fuel production affects bio-diversity.
Rapeseed and maize bio-fuels were calculated to produce up to 70% and 50% more green house gases respectively than the fossil fuels. Professor Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize winner for his contribution to the research on ozone, has mentioned that the amount of greenhouse gas emitted due to bio-fuel production from rapeseed and corn is much more than saved. Thus, the advantages with bio-fuel production seem to be nullified with catastrophic effects such as deforestation, global food crisis and rise in prices.
Various other studies conducted on the causes for global food crisis indicate other reasons such as, wheat crop failure for the second year in Australia, increase in demand for cereals and meat from developing nations like India and China and ban on food exports by countries like India, Serbia, Ukraine and Vietnam. However, it was also observed that the impact of these factors on world food crisis is not as significant as due to bio-fuel production. Thus, the developing and developed nations have to understand that bio-fuel production might make them oil-rich and reduce their dependence on middle east countries for oil imports but what purpose does it serve if millions of people are thrown into starvation. At the end of the day, man requires food to survive, not oil.