Calls grow for EU to 'suspend' biofuels push

The damning opinion comes one day after the publication of a new report by the World Bank, which suggests that biofuel production has played a key role in pushing global food prices up by 83% over the three years. "Most scenarios of increased use of biofuels imply substantial trade-offs with food prices," cautions the study. It also blames higher energy and fertilizer prices, a weak dollar and export bans for the recent food price hikes that have sparked outbreaks of violence in a number of developing countries in the past weeks. 

Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington DC on 13 April, World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick commented: "While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day." 

At the meeting, he called for a "New Deal for Global Food Policy" to help tackle hunger and malnutrition, but also to examine the interconnections between food supply and energy and climate change. 

France is also pushing its EU partners to respond by putting agriculture back at the top of the bloc's agenda. French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier said he will use a meeting of EU Agriculture Ministers today (14 April) to come up with a "European initiative on food security" throughout the world. 

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also stated that he wants the issue of high food prices and the link to biofuel production to be on the agenda of the G8 summit of industrialised nations that will take place in Hokkaido, Japan in July. 

But biofuel producers in Europe lament the fact that the debate has become "so emotional and irrational". Rob Vierhout, secretary general of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association (eBio), insists that existing scientific assessments show the 10% target to be "absolutely manageable" without unsustainable pressure being put on soil, water and biodiversity, even if it is entirely based on domestic production. 

"The EEA's scientific committee has come up with no new evidence," he stressed.

He warned against dropping the 10% target, saying this would simply shift the EU away from biofuel use while countries like the US and Brazil, which do not necessarily produce to the standards envisaged by the EU in its sustainability criteria, continue their production. 

He further stressed that while increased biofuels production "of course does have an impact on food prices," the current hikes "did not come around because of biofuels". Rather, he pointed to the change in lifestyle of hundreds of millions of people in China and India and bad weather as the main causes.

"There is no point in singling out biofuels as the source of all evil. Stopping biofuels would only have a very marginal impact," he told EurActiv, noting that the World Bank itself had a "long history of destroying African agriculture" through bad diagnostics and advice. 

The European Commission's environment spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich also told EurActiv that the Commission continues to believe the 10% target is achievable, but stressed that this will be done "alongside the sustainability criteria and the promotion of second generation biofuels". 

She refuted the idea that the EU could be heading towards a retreat on its biofuels policy, saying EU leaders had "reaffirmed the target" at the last summit (EurActiv 14/03/08).