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Impacts on food security

World-wide around 852 million people are without enough food to eat on a regular basis and another 2 billion face intermittent food insecurity (SOFI 2004). Progress in reducing poverty and hunger has been limited in many developing countries in recent years despite the development efforts. However, the percentage of hungry people in the world has declined. “Still more people around the world die of hunger than of AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined”. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) projections suggest that, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025.

In general, poor people spend a much bigger share of their overall expenditure on food than they do on energy. A recent study by IFPRI revealed that, both the urban and rural poor in a selected number of developing countries spend between about 50% and 70% of their expenditure on food and about 1% to 10% on energy. A country study (Ahmed et al. 2007) revealed that, a Bangladeshi five-person household living on one dollar a day per person typically spends its 5 dollars as follows: 3 dollars on food, 50 cents on energy and 1.5 dollars on non-food items. A 20% increase in both food and energy prices would require that they cut or reallocate 70 cents of their expenditures—and doing so from their 1.5 dollars in initial nonfood expenditures would be extremely difficult given the quasi-fixed costs of housing, school fees, transport, and so on (von Braun, J. and Pachauri, R.K. 2006). As a result, cuts will likely be made to food expenditure, exacerbating diet quality and micronutrient malnutrition.

The IFPRI, project that given continued high oil prices, the rapid increase in global biofuel production will push global corn prices up by 20 percent by 2010 and 41 percent by 2020. “The prices of oilseeds, including soybeans, rapeseeds, and sunflower seeds, are projected to rise by 26 percent by 2010 and 76 percent by 2020, and wheat prices by 11 percent by 2010 and 30 percent by 2020”. In the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where cassava is a staple food, its price is expected to increase by 33 percent by 2010 and 135 percent by 2020. The projected price increases may be mitigated if crop yields increase substantially or ethanol production based on other raw materials (such as trees and grasses) becomes commercially viable. But unless biofuel policies change significantly, neither development is likely. The production of cassava-based ethanol may pose an especially grave threat to the food security of the world's poor. Year 2007 began with tortilla riots in Mexico and ended with grain riots in China due to high energy prices and ethanol production drove up corn and grain prices. Several studies by economists at the World Bank and elsewhere suggest that caloric consumption among the world's poor declines by about half of one percent whenever the average prices of all major staples food increase by one percent. When one staple food becomes more expensive, people try to replace it with a cheaper one, but if the prices of nearly all staples go up, they are left with no alternative.



Many of the crops currently used for producing biofuel require high-quality agricultural land and significant inputs of fertilisers, pesticides and water. In most cases, biofuels crops are grown on the food crop land. A study by the International Energy Agency (IEA) assessed the impact on cropland if the US and EU expand biofuel production according to current plans. The results show that up to 43% of cropland would be needed for biofuel production. "Jatropha" is being pushed as one of the new smart crops for African small farmers to produce fuel, and the impact is already being felt around the continent. In Tanzania, thousands of farmers growing rice and maize are already being evicted from fertile areas of land with good access to water, for biofuel sugar cane and Jatropha plantations on newly privatised land. This topic is internationally controversial, with good-and-valid arguments on both sides of the ongoing debate. Prices on a number of food types used for biofuel have doubled in the last couple of years. If the use of food crops for biofuels (corn) increases, commodity prices will increase, making these crops less accessible to the poor. There are those that say biofuel is not the main cause. Some say the problem is a result of government actions to support biofuels. Others say it is just due to oil price increases. Whatever may be the cause, the impact of food price increases is greatest on poorer countries. There are other challenges as well. Like any innovation, increased production of energy crops has the potential to exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities by concentrating benefits on the well-off.

Without technologies to improve productivity, the prices changes would adversely affect poor, net-food-purchasing households and would probably exceed the possible income gains by many small farm households. In general, biofuels that use food sources are costly to the poor and raise prices on the basic foods that already represent a large share of poor people's household spending. Therefore, the crop subsidies that encourage the production of biofuels from certain food sources have a welfare burden on the poor, as well as on producers of those crops in other countries.


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 938


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Biofuel may play a role in curbing climate change but may create food insecurity and environmental hazards in many developing countries. | A policy alternative
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