[NYTr] Bio-Fuel: More Poverty, Environmental Destruction and Hunger

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


Bio-Fuel: More Poverty, Environmental Destruction and Hunger

By Astrid Barnet
AIN Special Service

The energy crisis, through over use, and the zenith of oil, is giving 
way to powerful global alliances between the oil, grain, genetic 
engineering and car industries.

Big names of the grain markets, like Cargill, ADM and Bunge: oil 
companies like BP, Shell, Chevron, Neste Oil, Repson and Total: giant 
auto companies like General motors, Volkswagen AG, FMC-Ford France, PSA 
Peugeot-Citroen and Renault: and biotechnology transnationals like 
Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta are among the main promoters of the 
"sinister idea of turning food into fuel" (as warned about by President 
Fidel Castro). In the United States, soy is currently the energy crop 
par excellence for the production of bio-fuel.  However, only 1.5% of 
the cultivation of this grain produced 68 million gallons of the 
product, an equivalent of less than 1% of the gasoline consumed in the 
country. Therefore, if all the soy cultivation of the country were 
destined for the production of bio-fuel, it would only cover 6 % of the 
national demand. Meanwhile, in Brazil, this same crop replaces eleven 
agricultural workers for each one that is employed.  This is not a new 
phenomenon.  In the last 70 years, 2.5 million farmers were displaced 
in the area of soy production in Paraná and 300,000 in Rio Grande do 
Sul.  Many of them now (the so called Landless) are found in the 
extensive area of the Amazon where once the ancient forests existed. 
For its part, the corporative biotechnology industry of the highly 
developed nations and implicated in this business are developing 
trans-genetic seeds for the production of energy and not food.

According to the press, "new genetically modified seeds are being 
created for the optimum production of biomass which contains the enzyme 
alpha-amylase, which will allow the process of ethanol production to 
begin." For the majority of observers it is clear that the production 
of bio-fuel is not environmentally or socially sustainable now or in 
the future, something that many government leaders are ignoring taking 
into account the profits that contribute to their pockets. They are 
limiting the agricultural needs of innumerable people who live in vast 
areas. In this way millions of valuable hectares of cultivation are 
being diverted, which could be destined for the production of food.

The battle between food and fuel impedes research centers from getting 
involved in impartial research and incapacitates that true capital of a 
nation, the intellectual capital, which could be exploring sustainable 
alternatives to face the energy crisis and climatic change. These new 
alliances between food and fuel are provoking changes in the global 
agricultural landscape, mainly in Latin America, and above all causing 
more rural poverty, environmental destruction and hunger.