Biofuels in Africa: Investment Boon or Food Threat?

[RestoreGore]

Biofuels in Africa: Investment Boon Or Food Threat?

Biofuels in Africa: Investment Boon or Food Threat?
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SOUTH AFRICA: April 4, 2007


JOHANNESBURG - Africa's vast arable lands have the potential to rival top agricultural nations like the United States in supplying biofuels to a world seeking cleaner energy sources.

But using land reserved for food production to supply biofuel demand could squeeze food supplies in a region vulnerable to shortages. It could also hurt poor consumers if the biofuel boom continues to push food prices higher. As alternative energy takes off, Africans hope to cash in on the high prices of the commodities used to produce these fuels.

Already, investors have pledged billions of dollars for plants to produce bioethanol and biodiesel from crops like sugar, maize and soy in Africa.

Ernst Janovsky, head of agriculture at First National Bank in Johannesburg, said the high rainfall belt between Angola, Zambia and Mozambique alone had the potential to rival the United States as a producer of maize used in bioethanol.

"It's almost as big as the size of the midwest of America. It has the same of type of potential and could actually outperform America," he told Reuters.

As is so often the case in Africa, however, there is one major obstacle to this kind of investment -- infrastructure. In Angola, for one, the land in question is covered by dense forest. Roads and manufacturing capacity have been wrecked by two decades of civil war.

Nevertheless, as the energy movement spreads and major agricultural powers find limits to their output, they may be forced to turn to Africa and be willing to spend money on setting up infrastructure, analysts say.

End of excerpt.
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I posted this for an obvious reason. Anything that is a food threat to Africa is also a water threat as most of the water used is for agriculture with much of it being wasted due to outdated methods, and ethanol production is known to use great amounts of water as well. And while I am a proponent of cellulosic ethanol I am not for designating fields just for production of crops to be used for it if it will in any way cause the poor to have a greater burden placed upon their food and water supplies than they already have. However, I fear that the allure of profit will blind companies to the other part of this equation, and we will not see prosperity come to these countries but only more exploitation.

I surely hope I am wrong as African nations and their people deserve a chance to for once be free to steer their own markets and to be able to trickle the profits down to the people who will benefit from them. However, again, water scarcity in Africa and drought is predicted to become much worse in the coming years. The IPCC is having its conference in Brussels this week, and on Friday April 6 will release their report regarding the impacts of climate change for the future by region.

This is what they predict for Africa:

IPCC

Impacts of Climate Change
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INTERNATIONAL: April 2, 2007

Following are impacts of global warming outlined in a draft UN climate report due to be released in Brussels on April 6. The draft, to be discussed by scientists and government experts in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is looking at the regional effects of warming:

AFRICA --

Reductions in the area suitable for agriculture, and in length of growing seasons and yield potential, are likely to lead to increased risk of hunger. --

An increase of 5-8 percent (60-90 million hectares) of arid and semi-arid land in Africa is projected by the 2080s under various climate change scenarios. --

Current stress on water in many areas of Africa is likely to increase, with floods and droughts. --

Any changes in the productivity of large lakes are likely to affect local food supplies. --

Ecosystems in Africa are likely to experience dramatic changes with some species facing possible extinctions. --

Major delta regions with large populations, such as the Nile and Niger rivers, are threatened by sea level rises.
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Therefore, it is going to take more than planting crops to make biofuel to stop the runaway train that is already coming down the tracks. Climate change is already happening. Glaciers that millions around the world depend on for freshwater are already melting. Severe and prolonged droughts that are affecting food and water sustainability are already occuring in Africa and other parts of the world. We then need human intervention to reverse our own behavior that is contributing to this crisis and investment in other forms of renewable energy like solar to save land for the growing of crops to be used as food to feed the hungry as well as to provide affordable and accessible energy. If we do not conserve water as well as hold governments and corporations accountable for their mismanagement and greed to provide a proper balance, our solutions may just wind up becoming bigger problems.

Water Is Life

[eppur_se_muova]

1. CASH CROPS = ECONOMIC SERVITUDE

Slaves to global free market capitalism. It worked with cotton, tobacco, coffee, rubber, should work with oil crops too.

Develop the FOOD agriculture within your own borders first, then think about energy crops.

[GliderGuider]

2. Do yourselves and all humankind a favour

and join Via Campesina.
http://viacampesina.org/main_en/index.html

Here's a call for global action on April 17.
http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=294&Itemid=33

Call for April 17: International Peasant’s struggle Day

The 17th of April is the International Peasant’s Struggle Day, established after the massacre of 19 landless peasants belonging to the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil on the 17th of April 1996 during the second conference of La Via Campesina in Tlaxcala Mexico.

In commemoration of the International Peasant’s Struggle Day, La Via Campesina and its allies are organizing activities and actions all over the world. Peasants and friends will rally around the following demands:

1. The WTO negotiations should not resume.
We want the WTO to permanently remain in the lethargy state it entered in July 2006. Under the WTO policies, the crisis of food, agriculture and family farming has deepened in every corner of the world.

We call peasants’ organizations and other social movements to urge their governments to put an end to the so-called Doha Development Agenda (DDA). In reality there will not be any development as long as countries are competing with each others to grab each others food and agriculture markets.

Challenging the Doha Development Agenda, peasants, fisher folks, pastoralists, workers, women and ordinary people in the world are demanding the implementation of food sovereignty.

(Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers. Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal - fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just income to all peoples and the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage our lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food.

Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations. (Excerpt of the Declaration of Nyeleni 2007, International Forum on Food Sovereignty in Selingue, Mali, February 2007))

We call peasants organizations and other social movements to discuss with their governments about trade and production alternatives based on food sovereignty and out of the WTO.

and four more demands that altogether form a powerful manifesto for human dignity and respect for the planet.

My partner and I have joined the National Farmers Union (www.nfu.ca). They're actively recruiting urban people to join as associate members (no voting rights) who support them as they fight for the same principles for Canadian farmers as Via Campesina.