Biofuels and World Hunger
ISIS Report 03/11/10
Damning report confirms critic’s charge that industrial biofuels are responsible for world’s food and hunger crisis
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 percent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
The report blames the biofuels targets set by the European Union (EU), and concomitantly, the huge financial incentives given to the biofuels industry, which together, provide a powerful driver for industrial biofuels. In 2006, the EU biofuel industry was already supported by tax exemptions and agricultural subsidies to the sum of €4.4 billion. In 2008, EU member states committed themselves to a target of 10 percent of transport fuels from renewable sources (i.e., biofuels) by 2020. If the same level of subsidies continues, the industry would receive €13.7 billion per year.
If all global biofuels targets are to be met, food prices could rise by up to an additional 76 percent by 2020 and starve an extra 600 million people.
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