Gas tank vs. dinner table: Impact of biofuels on global hunger debated at U.N. summit
The United States supports using corn for ethanol, but other nations say the practice is leading toward starvation worldwide.
ROME — Outside the U.N. emergency summit on food here today, protesters dressed as ears of corn. Inside, Bush administration officials found themselves on the defensive on a wide range of U.S. policies, from biofuel production to genetic engineering and subsidies.
Delegates clashed during the second day of the three-day meeting on how much blame can be assigned to biofuels for the meteoric rise in food prices. The U.S. is an enthusiastic supporter of robust and heavily subsidized biofuel industry, allocating about a quarter of its corn crop to the lucrative development of ethanol.
But other nations and numerous aid agencies contend that too much food is ending up in fuel tanks and not on dinner tables, deepening a growing threat of global starvation.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Edward T. Schafer, leading the U.S. delegation, emerged from a series of side meetings and acknowledged that a struggle was under way among nations to reach compromise language on the issue.
Finding consensus on biofuels, which are made from corn, sugar cane, palm oil and other foodstuffs, had been one of the goals outlined by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in opening the summit here at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Opponents and supporters diverge wildly on the pros and cons of biofuels and how harmful they may or may not be.
Schafer maintains that bumper crops in the U.S. mean that there's plenty of corn for both eating and filling tanks. He says the shift to biofuels accounts for no more than 3% of the hike in prices of commodities, which in some cases have doubled in recent years.
Several U.N. agencies, relief groups and the International Monetary Fund, however, say as much as 30% of the increase could be blamed on biofuels.
"Even 1% represents hardship for 16 million people," said Madelon Meijer, agricultural policy adviser for the British aid agency Oxfam. "Three percent already plunges a lot more people into poverty."
Oxfam was one of several groups staging demonstrations outside the conference, with people dressed as corn in symbolic tugs-of-war between the hungry and those needing fuel. Oxfam argues that the amount of grain required to produce enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV could feed a human being for a year.
