EDITORIAL

Hungry for oil, starving for food

Supplying the world's growing energy needs while at the same time improving food security for the poor and needy is no easy task. And if it can be done, it will probably involve developing new energy sources to replace fossil fuels while addressing the spiralling cost of food.

This seems to be the case for biofuels, which are being promoted in many countries, including Thailand, to reduce CO2 emissions and help in energy security.

However, if more arable land is used to produce monocrops such as tapioca and sugarcane to produce biofuels, it will afffect agriculture for food.

Global food production is already declining and food prices may climb for years because of expansion of farming for fuel and climate change.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, biofuel expansions alone could push maize prices up over two-thirds by 2020 and increase oilseed costs by nearly half, with subsidies for the industry effectively constituting a tax on the poor.

Global cereal stocks, a key buffer used to fight famine around the world, have sunk to their lowest level since the 1980s due to reduced plantings and poor weather, said the institute's director-general Joachim von Braun.

"The world eats more than it produces currently, and over the last five or six years that is reflected in the decline in stocks and storage levels. That cannot go on, and exhaustion of stocks will be reached soon," he told a conference in Beijing last week.

Countries such as Mexico and Haiti have already experienced food riots over soaring prices, said von Braun.

His view is shared by other experts, who say soaring global crude oil prices are among the factors to blame for food inflation.

In several Asian countries, higher fuel prices directly translate into an added burden for the poor through, for example, higher fares on public buses which are often people's only mode of transport.

In the Philippines, one of the world's biggest importers of rice, the government deployed troops last week to deliver grain to poor areas of the capital Manila amid worries about shortages.

In Indonesia, higher fuel costs mean a rise in the price of kerosene which is widely used by the poor for cooking.

Meanwhile, global warming could cut worldwide income from agriculture by 16 per cent by 2020, despite the potential for increased yields in some colder areas and the fertilising impact on plants of having higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

"With the increased risk of droughts and floods due to rising temperatures, crop-yield losses are imminent," said von Braun, in his report entitled World Food Situation.

There is no cure-all solution to this global predicament. Efforts to increase global food production must go hand in hand with better use of fossil fuels through conservation, which will help reduce CO2 emissions.

This means increasing fuel efficiency of automotive engines and promoting the production of hybrid electric/petrol vehicles, which despite their higher cost are so much in demand in several countries.

Greater use of clean and sustainable energy such as solar and wind power will also contribute to global food and energy security.

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