Commissioner: Biofuels shouldn`t be a scapegoat
8 May 2008
This week the European Parliament was told that "biofuels should not become a scapegoat" by Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
The statement follows intense criticism in the media over the EU's proposed 10% target for biofuels in transport by 2020, sparking fears that land use for cereals and oilseeds will expand and stocks for food will decline.
Demand for more crops doesn't have to mean more land under the plough. Since 1980 cereal production has risen by 43% but land requirements have fallen by 6%. We often forget about the improvements in yield which can be achieved on the back of secure investment in modern dynamic industries like the EU arable sector.
Neither should we forget that there are substantial tracts of arable land which are lying fallow in many of the new Member States. This is agricultural land which historically was used for crop production, but has fallen out of use due to years of economic decline in farming.
The EU's ambitious but realistic 10% target will provide the market pull stimulation that these farmers need to face a future market based agricultural economy and less dependence on EU subsidies.
The scale of cereal production needed to meet the EU targets has been grossly exaggerated in the press. Looking at the amount of bioethanol that would be needed to meet the 10% target in 2020, DG Agriculture has calculated that this would require 34 million tonnes of wheat per year, whereas the world annual cereal production is forecast at 2000 million tonnes per year. Less than 2% of total world grain supplies!
This land use figure also fails to show that the additional benefit of biofuel production is the co-product which is produced alongside the fuel. These can be utilised by the livestock industry as a valuable animal feed protein concentrate.
Unfortunately for farmers, an expanded biofuel industry is not a guarantee of increased prices. We just have to look at the Brazilian experience right now. Sugar cane is currently the most important feedstock for the production of bioethanol.
While other commodity markets are booming, sugar prices have continued to decline despite continuous growth in demand for food and from ethanol producers.
What the EU's binding target will achieve is a sense of security for those who wish to invest in the European biofuel industry and arable production in the future, a more politically acceptable and diverse source of fuel supplies and of course reduced emissions of damaging greenhouse gases from the transport sector.
Katy Lee
BAB European Parliamentary and Communications Coordinator
