GENEVA, Switzerland, April 28, 2008 (ENS) – The United States and the European Union have taken a “criminal path” by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.

At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

Ziegler was speaking before a meeting in Bern, Switzerland between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key United Nations agencies.

Jean Ziegler of Switzerland is
UN special rapporteur on
the right to food and a
professor of sociology
at the University of Geneva
and at the Sorbonne
in Paris. (Photo courtesy
FAO)

Ziegler said that last year the United States used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 percent of its petrol supplied by biofuels.

The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

Ziegler also said that speculation on international markets is behind 30 percent of the increase in food prices.

He said that companies such as Cargill, which controls a quarter of all cereal production, have enormous power over the market. He added that hedge funds are also making huge profits from raw materials markets, and called for new financial regulations to prevent such speculation.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a “horrifying” increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect.

Meanwhile, speaking in Rome today, a nutritionist with the UN World Food Programme said that “global price rises mean that food is literally being taken out of the mouths of hungry children whose parents can no longer afford to feed them.”

Andrew Thorne-Lyman said that even temporarily depriving children of the nutrients they need to grow and thrive can leave permanent scars in terms of stunting their physical growth and intellectual potential.

He said that families in the developing world are “finding their buying power has been slashed by food price rises, meaning that they can buy less food or food which isn’t as nutritious.”

But not everyone agrees. Toni Nuernberg, executive director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council based in Omaha, Nebraska, says, “I can unequivocally state that ethanol does not take food from the mouths of starving people.”

“Ethanol production uses field corn – most of which is fed to livestock with only a small percentage going into cereals and snacks. In fact, only the starch portion of the corn kernel is used to produce ethanol. The vitamins, minerals, proteins and fiber are converted to other products including sweeteners, corn oil and high-value livestock feed – feed which helps livestock producers add to the overall food supply,” said Nuernberg on Tuesday.

Constructed in 1993 in the state of Minnesota,
Corn Plus is one of the 110 ethanol
production plants operating in the
United States. (Photo courtesy
Corn Plus)

Nuernberg relates rising energy costs to food bills, as growers fuel tractors and machinery and truckers transport foodstuffs to market.

“The United States spends roughly one billion dollars a day on imported oil. A fraction of these funds would more than make up for the shortfall in the World Food Program,” Nuernberg said. “Ethanol is just one element in our drive to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It should not be a convenient scapegoat for global issues beyond our control.”

A World Bank report issued April 9 agrees with the UN officials. According to “Rising Food Prices: Policy Options and World Bank Response,” increases in global wheat prices reached 181 percent over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and overall global food prices increased by 83 percent.

Increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices, according to this report. Concerns over oil prices, energy security and climate change have prompted governments to increase bio-fuel production and use leading to greater demand for raw materials including: wheat, soy, maize and palm oil.

Food price hikes are also linked to higher energy and fertilizer prices, a weak dollar and export bans.

The Group of Eight, G8, will take up this matter at its annual meeting in July. The meeting will be attended by the leaders of the eight countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – the same countries said by Ziegler to be on a “criminal path.”

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, as chair of the G8, expressed his intention to raise the matter at the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit in letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Robert Zoellick on April 18.

Rapid increases in the large-scale production of liquid biofuels in developing countries could increase the marginalization of women in rural areas, threatening their livelihoods, according to a new study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO.

“Unless policies are adopted in developing countries to strengthen the participation of small farmers, especially women in biofuel production by increasing their access to land, capital and technology – gender inequalities are likely to become more marked and women’s vulnerability to hunger and poverty further exacerbated,” said Yianna Lambrou, co-author of the paper, “Gender and Equity Issues in Liquid Biofuels Production – Minimizing the Risks to Maximize the Opportunities.”

“Biofuel production certainly offers opportunities for farmers – but they will only trickle down to the farm level, especially to women, if pro-poor policies are put in place that also empower women,” said Lambrou.

Analysis being carried out by the world’s largest international food aid organization supports World Bank estimates that about 100 million people have been pushed deeper into poverty by the high food prices.

The UN World Food Programme, WFP, aims to feed 73 million people globally this year, but the agency now estimates it needs at least US$500 million more than anticipated last year to meet its 2008 operational budget of US$3.4 billion.

The half-billion dollar increase is solely due to the sharp hike in food and transport costs over the last few months.

On a recent visit to east Africa,
WFP Executive Director
Josette Sheeran met children
at the Stara Rescue Centre
and School in the Nairobi
slum of Kibera. (Photo
courtesy WFP)

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran of the United States says that high food prices are creating the biggest challenge that WFP has faced in its 45 year history, a “silent tsunami” of hunger.

Sheeran said that WFP could only fill a cup with half the food that it could last year because of rising food prices.

“The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions,” she said.

WFP is urging a comprehensive approach where all parties, from governments to UN agencies to nongovernmental organizations, all work together.

Alongside other partners, WFP will follow a three-track response. In the short term, WFP will seek full funding for targeted food safety nets and mother-child health programs in extreme situations. School feeding programs will be scaled up and used as a platform for urgent, nutritional interventions.

In the medium term, WFP will offer its huge logistics capacity to support life-saving distribution networks. Every hour of the day, WFP has 30 ships on the high seas, 5,000 trucks on the ground and 70 aircraft in the sky, delivering food to the hungry. Cash and voucher programs will be supported and so will local purchases from small farmers, helping them to afford inputs and sustain livelihoods;

In the longer term, WFP will support policy reform and provide advice and technical support to governments engaging in agricultural development programs.

Many governments are already taking action. Some are expanding targeted safety nets, such as cash transfer programs to vulnerable groups, food-for-work programs, or emergency food aid distribution. Several countries have lowered tariffs and other taxes on key staples, in order to provide some relief to consumers.

Other countries have put in place export bans, which are detrimental to food importers and reduce incentives for production.

Food crop prices are expected to remain high in 2008 and 2009 and then begin to decline, but they are likely to remain well above the 2004 levels through 2015 for most food crops.

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WASHINGTON, DC, February 29, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, has decided to invest up to $33.8 million for four projects that will develop improved enzyme systems to convert cellulosic material such as switchgrass and paper pulp into sugars suitable for production of biofuels.

The funding will cover Fiscal Years 2008-2011 in an effort to meet President George W. Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost competitive by 2012. Funding will depend on appropriations from Congress.

These projects aim to address key technical hurdles associated with mass production of cellulosic ethanol, which does not utilize food crops to produce the fuel. Instead,

Combined with industry cost share, up to $70 million will be invested in these projects, with a minimum 50 percent cost share from industry.

Corn stalks left in the field after the ears are harvested are known as stover. They may form a feedstock for ethanol production when the technology is developed to extract their sugars.

(Photo by Bob Allen courtesy NREL)

DOE Assistant Secretary Andy Karsner made today’s announcement while delivering keynote remarks at the Renewable Fuels Association National Ethanol Conference in Orlando, Florida.

“Success of these projects will play a pivotal role in the rapid development and deployment of renewable fuels to reduce emissions and dependence on foreign oil, and fundamentally change how we power our vehicles,” DOE Assistant Secretary Karsner said.

“In the interest of the environment, and energy, economic and national security, biofuels must continue to play a significant role as we work to diversify our nation’s energy sources and provide a balanced portfolio of science and technology solutions to help meet the rapidly growing demand for energy worldwide,” said Karsner.

These four projects seek to more cost-effectively and efficiently breakdown processed biomass into fermentable sugars, a significant challenge in converting biomass into fuels.

Projects were selected based on their demonstrated ability to reduce the cost of enzymes-per-gallon of ethanol by improving an enzyme’s performance. Three of the projects are wholly American, while one includes partners from Denmark, France and China.

Selected projects must demonstrate the ability to produce enzymes at a commercial-scale, and have a sound business strategy to market the enzymes or enzyme production systems in biorefinery operations.

Cellulosic ethanol is a renewable fuel made from a wide variety of non-food materials, including agricultural wastes such as corn stover and cereal straws, industrial plant waste like sawdust and paper pulp, and energy crops such as switchgrass, grown for fuel production.

By relying on a variety of feedstocks, cellulosic ethanol can be produced in nearly every region of the country, using material grown locally, Karsner said. Though it requires a more complex refining process, cellulosic ethanol contains more net energy and results in lower greenhouse emissions than traditional corn-based ethanol.

Negotiations between the selected companies and DOE will begin immediately to determine final project plans and funding levels.

The selected projects are:

* DSM Innovation Center Inc. of Parsippany, New Jersey: Development of a Commercial Enzymes System for Lignocellulosic Biomass Saccharification. This project will employ DSM’s internal, proprietary fungal systems to develop new approaches to improve enzymes for the conversion of pre-treated lignocellulosic biomass into sugars suitable for fermentation into cellulosic ethanol. Team Members: Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies (Nebraska); and DOE’s Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories (New Mexico).

* Genencor – a Division of Danisco, USA, Inc. of Palo Alto, California: Enhancing Cellulase Commercial Performance for the Lignocellulosic Biomass Industry. This project plans to reduce the enzyme-dose level required for biomass saccharification by improving the specific performance of the Trichoderma Reesei mix of fungal-based cellulases to facilitate production of cellulosic ethanol from sugars produced by the saccharification process. Team Members: DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Colorado)

* Novozymes, Inc. of Davis, California: Project Decrease – Development of a Commercial-Ready Enzyme Application System for Ethanol. This project aims to improve performance of Novozymes’ most advanced enzyme system by decreasing the dosage of enzyme required to hydrolyze biomass into fermentable sugars suitable for cellulosic ethanol production. Team Members: Novozymes North America (North Carolina); Novozymes A/S (Denmark); Novozymes (China) Investment Co. Ltd; DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Washington) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Colorado); the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique University (France); and Cornell University (New York)

* Verenium Corporation of San Diego, California: Commercialization of Customized Cellulase Solutions for Biomass Saccharification. This project will leverage Verenium’s advanced enzyme development capabilities to commercialize a cellulase enzyme system to produce a more cost-effective enzyme solution for biomass saccharification processes that will also tolerate conditions that enable more efficient process economics in producing ethanol from cellulosics.

This funding announcement is part of over $1 billion the Energy Department has announced within the last year for multi-year biofuels research and development projects.

The four newly funded projects complement the DOE’s January 2008 announcement in which four projects were selected for a total of up to $114 million in federal funding to build small-scale biorefinery projects to be located in Commerce City, Colorado; St. Joseph, Missouri; Boardman, Oregon; and Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. These small-scale biorefineries will test newer, novel refining processes.

Other major DOE-led biofuels R&D projects include up to $405 million in DOE funding for three Bioenergy Centers; and up to $385 million in DOE funding, over four years, for the development of six commercial-scale biorefineries, which will focus on near-term commercial processes.

With all of these projects, which reflect a coordinated approach to addressing all technological aspects of making biofuels more commercially viable, the amount of fossil fuel used to produce the biofuels is up to 90 percent less than that associated with gasoline, Karsner said.

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With the launch of The Green [www.sundancechannel.com] television programming tonight on the Sundance Channel concentrating on green fuels, we thought we’d take a minute to dig a little deeper into fuels that aren’t as harmful to the planet as gasoline and diesel. Biofuels, like biodiesel, ethanol and even straight or waste vegetable oil that we mentioned yesterday, offer a greener way to fuel the cars we drive today, and are a great short to mid-term solution for avoiding oil. This is a huge topic, of course, so, for today, we’ll look at a few of the alternatives for making some of the biofuels you might find at a gas station near you.

One of the knocks on biofuels is that they require food crops, or crops that can be used for food production — corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel are the most common. The demand for fuel crops is raising prices, making them less affordable as a food source. Another issue is that virgin land is being stripped for planting as demand for these crops grows. Sugarcane producers are moving into the Brazilian cerrado, soya farmers into the Amazon rainforest and palm oil plantations into the Malaysian rainforest. Often, these areas are burned clear before planting, which releases more carbon than will be saved in many years of producing biofuels. Thankfully, there are sources for biofuel that don’t require food crops to be grown, or rainforest be clearcut:

[*] Algae [www.treehugger.com] is one of the most promising sources for producing biofuels, so much so that TreeHugger had had look at it again [www.treehugger.com].
[*] Grass pellets [www.treehugger.com] work well because grass grows so quickly; they have a much more sustainable 70 day cycle compared to the 70 million years it takes fossil fuels.
[*] Beef [www.treehugger.com] is not just what’s for dinner; animal fat works just as well as vegetable oils for biodiesel. A large meat processing plant in Australia has received state government funding to assist in the conversion of their waste animal fat into biofuel. From the 1.6 million or so livestock they slaughter each year, the abattoir is expecting to recover about 12,000 tons of waste fat annually; they’ll convert this into almost 3 million gallons of biodiesel.
[*] Plain old coconut oil [www.treehugger.com] can be used as a diesel replacement (similar to the veggie oil we mentioned yesterday), which is particularly helpful in regions and in developing countries where the petroleum version is particularly hard to come by.
[*] Switch grass [www.treehugger.com] has tremendous potential for use as a biofuel: it has a high yield per acre, low production cost, low pesticide use, and doesn’t compete with itself for use as food.

Of course, as with many things in the green sphere, biofuels aren’t the only answer, and are really just in the infancy of their development. But with improving technology and raw materials (like the ones we listed above), they stand a pretty good chance of changing the way we drive, not in 2050, not in another ten years, but before the decade is out.