“Great potential”“Great potential”

Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), says that biofuels could bring about a renaissance of agriculture in developing countries. Do you agree?
Let’s not speak in too general terms, but in some regions of the world, it may indeed be so. Farmers in developing countries have suffered from subsidised agricultural competition from rich countries for decades. Remember that the tortilla crisis in Mexico came about when domestic corn production came to a standstill because of cheap imports from the US, which were possible thanks to a free-trade agreement. Biofuels could make prices for agrarian goods rise again, opening up new markets for farmers in poor countries. For countries with favourable climatic conditions, like Senegal or Kenya, the prospects are good.

What are the risks?
Problems occur wherever biofuel production is mainly geared to large-scale exports. Where giant monocultures dominate, social problems arise: people are expropriated, driven off the land and forced to migrate to the cities.

So you do not consider Brazil a promising example?
There are many aspects to what is happening in Brazil. Because of ethanol production, plantations of sugar cane have grown dramatically in the past few years. The government is obviously interested in exports. Should Europe and the US open their markets to ethanol from Brazil, there will be no end. Environmentally sensitive areas would be increasingly affected – perhaps not so much in the Amazon, where sugar cane is not planted, but certainly in Cerrado and in the Atlantic rainforest, both of which have ecologically crucial regions with great biodiversity. The Brazilian government is making large areas accessible and available there.

Are bioenergy plantations profitable even though rich countries’ markets are still closed?
The surprising thing is that most developing countries are currently producing for their own consumption. Biofuels are hardly traded internationally yet, and that will not change much in the near future. The switch to biofuels is going on at the domestic level. One reason is that the price of oil has risen so steeply. Second, biofuels reduce the need to import commodities. Third, the technology for biofuel production has become fairly mature. Senegal is setting up a biofuel industry today with Brazilian support, and the technology in use is far more advanced than anything known in Brazil 20 years ago.

Are you saying that the greatest economic potential lies in establishing biofuels industries for domestic markets?
Exactly, that is where I see the greatest opportunities and the lowest risks. The national market is decisive. Of course, we still have to make sure that certain criteria are met; for instance, local people must benefit from the value added. In that case, bioenergy has great potential, because the commodities can be grown in long-neglected rural areas.

But isn’t all the talk about the great agricultural outlook in poor countries normally about export-oriented farming?
Of course, some governments are interested in exports in order to raise foreign exchange. But that approach entails social and environmental risks, as we just discussed. Furthermore, the question is, who exactly is interested in such exports. Generally, that is the case in energy-intensive economies – such as Europe, which depend on imports and make their interests known clearly.

Could international standards for producing biofuels help to prevent undesirable side-effects?
Standards and sustainability criteria are important. Currently, there probably is no alternative to make sure large plantations do not have great social and environmental impact. However, the question arises of how to enforce such norms in countries like Brazil or Indonesia. That is similarly the case for other standards. Political interventions and incentives might also make sense. The global discussion on how to enforce sustainability criteria is still going on.

Critics say that small farmers always suffer when biofuels are produced, be it for the domestic market or for exports, because plantations must be of a certain size to become profitable. In other words, smallholders are forced to make room for large farms or work as contract farmers. Is that a problem?
I think a certain type of small farms is indeed in danger. However, we have to consider all potential consequences on a case-by-case basis. If a large corporation sets up a production facility somewhere and forces all farmers in the area to work for it, that’s bad; and, sadly, that will happen in many places, and has already been happening for a long time in the food sector. On the other hand, small farmers could form cooperatives and similar organisations, in order to benefit from market opportunities. There are quite a few promising examples, for instance in the fair-trade or organic-food sectors.

Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, says we should be careful, because the biofuels boom might cost hundreds of thousands of lives if it reduced food supplies and made them more expensive. How great is that danger?
I don’t know where he gets those figures from. Indeed, local shortages are possible, especially if production quickly switches to biofuels on a large scale. In that case, food prices may skyrocket, just as they are doing at the moment. On the other hand, we must not forget that farmers have hardly been making money from growing food in developing countries for decades, because prices were so low. The current price hike is an incentive to re-start production. The real danger is ongoing price volatility, which the poor would not be able to cope with. To prevent such volatility, the industrial nations will have to be especially careful when promoting bioenergy.

Another proposal is for rich and poor countries to sign a biofuels pact. Advanced nations would then largely forgo production, given that they cannot satisfy their needs with domestic production anyway. In return, they would buy fuel from developing countries that promised to uphold social and ecological standards. Does that approach make sense?
It sounds enticing, particularly as it is much more efficient to produce biofuels in tropical countries. Nonetheless, I do not think it is a good idea. Such an agreement would put a lot of pressure on developing countries to produce, and that would entail a considerable impact on the environment and the production of foodstuffs. I propose developing the biofuels sector gradually, starting with domestic markets to ensure that production remains socially and environmentally friendly.

How great is the potential for producing biofuels from non-edible raw materials?
That is already being done, consider jatropha seeds, for example. But the future is in the gasification and liquefaction of wood. Experts see great potential. At the moment, however, the processes are not profitable because the energy input is very high. On the other hand, these so-called second-generation biofuels will also depend on plantations. Existing forests simply do not provide enough wood. So the problem of competition with food production will stay. Moreover, the greater energy yield of wood per hectare will also be largely offset once the share of ethanol in gasoline has risen from five to around 20 or even more percent.

Proponents of biofuels point out that the developing countries have millions of hectares of land that are not used for agricultural purposes.
Well, that figure is highly speculative. It’s basically an extrapolation, applied to Africa on the basis of the intensive agriculture practiced in Europe. Beyond any doubt, there is a lot of untapped potential, but I think we will have to change considerably the way agriculture is done if we want to expand bioenergy. We need to make agriculture much more sustainable to create the leeway for biofuels. Otherwise we’ll lose even more of the land currently not used. Just consider meat consumption: Around 100 million hectares in Brazil serve to produce animal feed and meat; but only 6 million for ethanol production. If we do not address the meat issue, it will be hard to expand bioenergy to a greater extent.

Questions by Tillmann Elliesen.