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Task 3. Bioenergy and Food Security

Impact and Rationale. Bioenergy and food security have been seen as competing interests in the vast majority of studies and statements that have addressed their interaction, and avoidance of negative impacts of bioenergy on food security has been an increasingly prominent policy objective. With food and petroleum prices both at near all-time highs, we expect the contentious debate over "food vs fuel" to continue. To be sure, some forms of bioenergy production in some locations do increase food insecurity, and avoiding this outcome is a worthy goal.

Although land availability is limited in some locations, and in particular for some types of land, there are strong indications that the perception of an acute global shortage of land that could grow food and/or bioenergy feedstocks is likely not correct. Consider:

The idea that bioenergy could be developed in ways that enhance food security has begun to be voiced. The African resolution of the GSB project states:

"Africa faces pressing human challenges associated with an interconnected set of issues involving poverty, food security, economic development, gender issues, health, and energy security... Bioenergy has clear potential to be developed in ways that contribute positively to meeting these challenges, including enhancing food security, but could also be developed in ways that exacerbate them. A vision for bioenergy in Africa that is responsive to African challenges is both an urgent need and an important opportunity."

Commenting on the comprehensive "Mapping Food and Bioenergy" report, lead author Dr. Rocio Diaz-Chavez observed (2010):

"If approached with the proper policies and processes and with the inclusion of all the various stakeholders, bioenergy is not only compatible with food production; it can also greatly benefit agriculture in Africa. Bioenergy production can bring investments in land, infrastructure, and human resources that could help unlock Africa's latent potential and positively increase food production."

Lynd and Woods (2011), in work initiated as part of the GSB project, observe:

Consideration of the impact of bioenergy on African food security has tended to focus on land competition and to overlook bioenergy's marked potential to promote rural development. However, potentially productive land is rather plentiful in much of Africa whereas lack of development is the most important underlying cause of hunger...

Consider the multiple food security benefits of producing bioenergy from inedible crops grown on marginal land:

  • Employment, and development of marketable skills, for rural Africans who have few opportunities for either.
  • Introduction of sorely needed agricultural infrastructure and knowhow.
  • Improved balance of payments and currency valuation. As economic development proceeds in Africa, demand for electricity and fuel will continue to increase sharply, and the cost of importing oil will impose an ever-growing burden on Africa's economies and farmers.
  • Energy democratization, self-sufficiency and availability for agricultural processing. Restricted access to clean, affordable energy impedes development and food production, amplifies food supply chain losses, and exacerbates hunger.
  • An economically-rewarding way to regenerate Africa's vast areas of degraded land.
  • A route to advancing agriculture in Africa largely independent of factors that have made this difficult in the case of food production. North America and Europe export large amounts of subsidized food at prices difficult for African farmers to compete with. However, these regions do not export biofuels now and are unlikely to do so in the future, and exporting heat and electricity is not feasible.
  • Lessened conflict, which is widely recognized as both a cause and an effect of hunger and poverty in Africa. Improved food security through bioenergy could thus replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one.

Crops grown on higher quality land would in general realize the benefits listed above, but the situation is more complex than for marginal land because of stronger interactions with food production. These interactions are a potential asset if managed well, but represent a risk to food security if managed poorly.

Showing that bioenergy has the potential to have a positive rather than negative impact on food security would be tremendously significant in terms of elucidating the circumstances under which this can be realized, negating a primary perceived constraint to bioenergy production, and – not the least – identifying a new approach to one of the leading causes of human misery.

Approach. We will examine, likely in more detail than undertaken previously, the hypothesis that bioenergy production can be implemented in ways that benefits rather than exacerbates food security. This will focus on factors that cause food insecurity – including poverty, undermining local production by foreign subsidies and in some cases food aid, poorly developed agricultural infrastructure and know-how, degraded land, and conflict (Thurow and Kilman, 2009; FAO, 2010; Lal, 2010) – and will include evaluating the relative impacts of variously configured and integrated bioenergy supply chains on land competition and rural development.

Lynd and Woods suggest that bioenergy projects in Africa be expected to demonstrably improve food security at a local level. This raises two questions that the GSB project could address:

  1. How would the food security impact of a proposed bioenergy project be evaluated?
  2. What would be the potential sites, attributes, and participants associated with an exemplary African bioenergy project that offered decisive benefits in terms of food security, energy security, and the environment?

In the absence of bioenergy, increasing challenges to food security are anticipated. A recent Oxfam report (Bailey, 2011) warns "we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth's natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people." Analyzing bioenergy in relation to these dynamic trends is likely necessary in order to fully address the bioenergy and food security interaction. The GSB project will develop its analytical models and approaches so that the response to altered climate can be evaluated, and will likely undertake such evaluation in the future.

Leadership. Task 3 activities are led by Jeremy Woods of Imperial College, London. Co-leaders may be added in the future.

1A. Temu, World Agroforestry Centre, Presentation at the University of Stellenbosch, August, 2009.

References

Last Updated August 14, 2012