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8 October, 2008
The document that circulates annually under the title ‘The State of Food and Agriculture´ (SOFA), analyzes the advantages and risks of the biofuels.  “The biofuels production based on agricultural products grew more than the triple between 2000 and 2007 and now it almost supposes two percent of the world consumption of fuels for the transport”, sustains the report. “In spite of the scarce importance of the liquid biofuels in terms of the world energy supply, the demand of agricultural raw materials (sugar, corn, oleaginous seeds) to obtain them will continue increasing in the next decade and maybe later on, increasing the pressure on the alimentary prices”, warned the experts of the FAO. The agency of United Nations also sustains that the biofuel impact on the environment ” is not always positive.” “A bigger production and biofuels employment won’t necessarily contribute to reduce the emissions of hothouse effect gases as much as previously it had been supposed”, reveals the report. “The changes in the use of the earth – for example the deforestation to satisfy the growing demand of agricultural products – are a great threat to the quality of the floor, the biodiversity and the emissions of hothouse effect gases”, Jacques Diouf pointed out, general director of the agency of United Nations. The experts of FAO estimate that “the policies and subsidies of the biofuels should be reconsidered with urgency to maintain the objective of the world alimentary security, to protect the poor peasants, to promote a wide based rural development and to assure the environmental sustainability.” The FAO also criticizes the fiscal incentives because they have generated “the quick artificial growth of the biofuels production”, what implies “high costs” so much economic as social and environmental. The biofuels is object of a growing polemic, since its detractors assure that they contribute to the rise of the prices of the foods, the deforestation and the displacement of populations in the poor countries. For its defenders, on the other hand, the biofuels can be good to cut the dependence on the petroleum and to fight against the global heating, when reducing the emissions of hothouse effect gases generated by fossil fuels. The report of the FAO will generate a strong debate, mainly among the biofuel producing latin american countries, as Brazil, Colombia and the Central American El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala, which took the road to the biofuels, although to a smaller scale.¼br /> United States is the first ethanol producer starting from corn (alcohol fuel), with 48% of the world total in 2007. Brazil follows its step, with 31% of the ethanol world production, manufactured starting from the sugarcane.  “We still don’t know the report, but for the anticipations I believe that it will raise reactions, because it doesn’t correspond to that agreed in the summit of June held in Rome”, commented to AFP Francisco Coy, representative of Colombia before the agency of United Nations. The signatory countries of the declaration of Rome invited five months ago to make “studies in depth” on the biofuels, qualified as “an opportunity and a challenge.”¼br /> The answer to that order seems to be the wide report of the FAO, of some 130 pages, in which “the perspectives, the risks and the opportunities of the biofuels” are analyzed, as the subtitle recites. The FAO on the other hand nurtures big hopes on the second generation biofuels.¼br /> “They are still not available at commercial level, but they use raw materials as wood, high grasses, agricultural and forest waste, and they could improve the balance of the fossil energy and the hothouse effect gases of the biofuels”, assures the entity. “The second generation technologies, if well designed and applied, they would have a bigger potential in terms of reduction of the emissions of hothouse effect gases with a smaller pressure on the natural resources”, Diouf assured. Source: AFP Deje un comentario |
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