BIOFUELS CAUSE OF 75% OF GLOBAL FOOD PRICE INCREASE

World Bank Secret Report Confirms Biofuel Cause of World Food Crisis

by F. William Engdahl

source: www.globalresearch.ca

July 10, 2008

A secret study by the World Bank, which reportedly has not been made public on pressure from the Bush Administration, concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in especially the USA and EU are directly responsible for the current explosion in grain and food prices worldwide. The US Government at the recent Rome UN Food Summit claimed that "only 3% of food prices" were due to bio-fuels.

The World Bank secret report says that at least 75% of the recent price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture—mainly maize in North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU—in order to grow crops to be burned for vehicle fuel.

The World Bank study confirms what we wrote more than a year ago about the madness of bio-fuels. It fits the agenda described in the 1970’s by Henry Kissinger, namely,

‘If you control the food you control the people.’

According to the London Guardian newspaper which has been given a copy of the suppressed report, the World Bank study was completed in April, well before the June Rome Food Summit, but was deliberately suppressed as "embarrassing to the position of the Bush Administration."

The President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is a former top Bush Administration official. Washington is trying to use a crisis which its bio-fuel subsidies created, since a new Farm bill passed in 2005, to advance the spread of Genetically Manipulated Organisms such as GMO maize, soybeans, rice and other crops patented by Monsanto and other "gene giants."

Their strategy is to use the explosive rise in grain prices worldwide, a rise fuelled by hedge funds and troubled US and European banks and investment funds pouring billions of dollars into speculation that grain prices will continue to soar.

In other words, the food "crisis" is a crisis of speculation in food futures.

The planned EU and USA bio-fuel acreage quotas and the periodic droughts and floods in key growing regions such as the USA Midwest then provide backdrop for speculative price run-ups.

But the main driver is that tens of millions of hectares of prime agriculture land in the world’s two largest food export regions - the USA and the EU - are being permanently removed from food production in order to grow raw material to be burned for vehicle fuel.

The suppressed study

The World Bank study, the most detailed analysis of the global food crisis so far, concludes that bio-fuels have forced "food prices up by 75%." That is far more than previous estimates.

That is a damning refutation of the politically-motivated US Department of Agriculture estimate that plant-derived fuels add only 3% to food prices. The report is expected to increase pressure on the European Union governments as well as Washington to change their present bio-fuel subsidy and support policies.

The report has been leaked just days before the important annual Group of 8 industrial nation leaders’ summit held in Hokkaido Japan. The food crisis will be a major topic there as pressure on governments grows to do something.

The World Bank report estimates that doubling and tripling of world food prices in the past three years have forced an added 100 million people below the poverty line. That has triggered food riots from Bangladesh to Egypt.

The report as well calculates that even the successive droughts in Australia and other major food regions have had only a "marginal" impact on food prices.

Within the EU, for example, as of April all vehicles in the UK must contain fuel with at least 2.5% bio-fuel. The EU has in place a target of mandatory 20% by 2020, a staggering amount.

George W. Bush has cynically claimed higher food prices are merely due to higher demand from India and China.

The leaked World Bank study refutes that:

"Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

"Without the increase in bio-fuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the World Bank report states.

The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and February 2008. Higher energy and fertilizer prices accounted for an increase of only 15%. Bio-fuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

The study demonstrates that production of bio-fuels has distorted food markets in three main ways.

First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going to production of bio-diesel.

Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for bio-fuel production.

Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

The real agenda behind the food crisis

The World Bank study is the first to include all three factors. What is missing from the World Bank study however is the longer-term geopolitical agenda behind the present global food and energy crises.

As I document in great detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the long term agenda of powerful leading circles in the West, particularly represented in tax exempt private foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Gates foundations and the private wealth behind them, is a long term agenda of population reduction, in the interests of the global economic and financial elites.

Food scarcity, higher prices for basic foods in developing countries as well as control of food seeds through patent and Terminator suicide seed sales by Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF, Bayer and a few select agriculture chemical seed giants—the "horsemen of the GMO Apokalypse," have been developed to advance the agenda of massive depopulation of the developing world.

The policy goes back, as the book documents in detail, to the early years of the 20th Century when Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, Gamble, H.G. Wells, Margaret Sanger, and other wealthy circles backed the development of eugenics research. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the eugenics and forced sterilization research at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (today's Max Planck Institute) until it became too politically hot in 1939.

After the end of the war, Rockefeller and others in the eugenics movement decided for political reasons to change the name of eugenics. The new name they chose was "genetics."

GMO is a project, based on wrong science, financed with over $100 million of private money from the Rockefeller Foundation. The ultimate aim is for the first time in history to control life on the planet.

As Henry Kissinger put in during the 1970’s food crisis, "control the food and you control the people."

In this light it is worth noting that as a solution to a crisis which it deliberately created by its massive government subsidies to farmers to grow bio-fuels instead of food, the Bush Administration made and continues to make a major pressure at the Rome Food Summit in early June and after, to open the doors to GMO as the alleged "solution" to world hunger.

On June 13, just after the Rome UN Food Summit, John Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State, stated,

"We therefore are strongly encouraging countries to remove barriers to the use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology," adding, "Biotechnology tools can help speed the development of crops with higher yields, higher nutrition value, better resistance to pests and diseases, and stronger food system resilience in the face of climate change."

Washington and the GMO companies now use the more deceptive term, "biotechnology" instead of the controversial GMO term, in a linguistic ploy to overcome opposition.

Independent scientific studies and countless farmer reports have shown that long-term planting of GMO or bio-tech crops as the gene giants prefer to call it, far from giving higher crop yields, lowers the yields and development of resistant "super-weeds" usually mean more, not less Roundup or other GMO-paired chemical herbicides and pesticides are needed. In short the glorious claims for GMO are marketing fraud.

According to highly informed reports, Washington had been told that Pope Benedict XVI would endorse the spread of GMO, something the Vatican until now has been strongly opposed to on moral and other grounds, as a solution to world hunger. At the last minute that endorsement did not happen for reasons only the Pope perhaps knows.

Groups like Greenpeace and the London Independent newspaper in the days before the Rome UN summit reported interviews with senior Church figures stating that the policy reverse was expected.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the entire Rome UN Summit was orchestrated by Washington, London’s Gordon Brown and other Malthusian governments in part to try to convince the Pope to reverse its policy on GMO. The Roman Catholic Church today stands as one of the most important moral barriers to widespread acceptance of GMO in many developing countries such as the Philippines and Latin America.

The leak of the World Bank report adds a dramatic new element into what is becoming one of the major political issues along with oil price manipulation.

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of Seeds of Destruction, Global Research, 2007 [see below], and the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He may be contacted via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

BIOFUELS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

3 July 2008

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

Will EU demand for biofuel mean starvation for world's poorest?

April 29, 2009

The controversy surrounding the use of biofuel in road fuel has heightened as one African publication accuses the biofuel industry of taking food directly out of the mouths of the hungry. Business Daily Africa’s article entitled ‘Africa to feed EU’s appetite for biofuels as its people starve’ explores the relationship between the European Union’s introduction of a biofuel directive in 2008 and rises in food prices.

In addition to concerns about the true carbon footprint and environmental cost of biofuel, a coalition of international charities accuses the EU Biofuel Directive (which requires all road fuel used by member states to consist of 10 per cent biofuel by 2020) of making biofuels much more profitable than feeding the hungry, the publication reports.

The French chapters of Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD) report that the figures speak for themselves; 232 kilos of maize are needed to produce 50 litres of ethanol — roughly enough to fill an average car tank, or enough to provide the amount of calories a child needs in a year.

Ambroise Mazal, who heads CCFD’s side of the campaign against biofuels told Business Daily Africa: ‘‘The problem remains that, as of today, the EU can produce a mere two per cent of the required total [to meet the Biofuel Directive]. European agriculture could potentially account for half of the required 10 per cent, but the rest will have to be imported from outside the EU.”

According to the publication, many African countries have expanded single-crop farming surfaces as a response to European hunger for biofuel, leading to land, water and other limited resources being diverted from scarce food-producing crops.

Several international institutions including the International Monetary Fund have acknowledged the social, economic and nutritional impacts on developing countries and their already tense food resources. Despite this, several African states have drafted policies in favour of biofuel crops.

Here in the UK, the Renewable Fuels Agency which was set up by the Government to implement the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), a response to the EU Biofuel Directive, commissioned the Gallagher Review last year to investigate the link between biofuels, rising carbon emissions and spiralling food prices.

The report concluded that the use of biofuels in road fuel had lead to some unintended environmental and social problems. An amendment was subsequently made to the first target set out RTFO, to 5 per cent biofuel by 2013-14 instead of the initial target of 5 per cent by 2010-11, but it failed to halt the demand for biofuel.

The UK exceeded its biofuel obligations last year, making around 2.7 per cent of the total UK road transport fuel supply. Research last year by Friends of the Earth found that some fuel suppliers were adding twice as much biofuel as required by law, bulking out their fuel with cheap biofuel and defying the RFO’s call to slow demand for the controversial ‘green’ fuel.

In Senegal, a country affected by food riots a year ago, up to 200,000 hectares (10 per cent of the country’s arable land) might be set aside for jatropha crops for biofuels.

Second and third generation biofuels are supposed to limit environmental and social impacts because of either the use of non food-producing crops or biomass such as algae and fungus.

‘‘That’s a sham,’’ insists Mazal, ‘‘because second generation fuels made from non-edible crops still take up arable lands and the research is far from developing sustainable biomass in laboratories.’’
To read the full article, visit Business Daily Africa.

What do you think? Should the EU and the UK halt obligations for biofuels until such time as we can be sure of the environmental and social impacts? Should fossil fuel suppliers be stopped from exceeding legal obligations on biofuel? Are biofuels green?

Source: TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk

La FAO tire la sonnette d'alarme sur les dangers des bio-carburants

ROME - La FAO, l’agence de l’ONU pour l’Alimentation et l’Agriculture, met sérieusement en doute les bienfaits supposés des biocarburants sur l’environnement et s’en prend aux politiques de soutien à cette nouvelle forme d’énergie, dans un rapport publié mardi à Rome.

La production de biocarburants, qui a triplé entre 2000 et 2007 et représente 2% de la consommation mondiale de combustibles pour le transport, a été "l’un des facteurs de la hausse des prix agricoles et de la crise alimentaire mondiale", a souligné le directeur général de la FAO, Jacques Diouf, lors d’une conférence de presse.

"Outre les conséquences négatives des biocarburants sur la sécurité alimentaire de la planète, nous avons des doutes concernant leur impact sur la réduction des gaz à effet de serre, ainsi que des inquiétudes sur leurs conséquences sur l’environnement", a déclaré M. Diouf.

Dans ce rapport, la FAO souligne que "l’utilisation et la production croissante de biocarburants ne contribueront pas forcément à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre autant qu’espéré".

"Si certains agrocarburants, comme ceux tirés du sucre, peuvent engendrer des émissions de gaz à effet de serre bien inférieures, ce n’est pas le cas de nombreux autres", poursuit la FAO, citant notamment les cas du mais et du colza, respectivement exploités aux Etats-Unis et en Europe.

La FAO tire aussi la sonnette d’alarme à propos de la réaffectation des terres agricoles aux biocarburants.

"Les modifications de l’affectation des terres et la déforestation, représentent une grave menace pour la qualité des sols, la biodiversité, et les émissions de gaz à effet de serre", a souligné Jacques Diouf.

Le rapport note que "l’impact des biocarburants sur les émissions de gaz à effet de serre, les sols, l’eau et la biodiversité" change "sensiblement selon les pays, les biocarburants eux-mêmes, les matières premières et les méthodes de production".

La FAO plaide donc pour "des approches harmonisées de l’analyse du cycle de vie, des bilans des gaz à effet de serre et des critères de durabilité".

Concernant les mesures de soutien à la production de biocarburants (subventions, barrières douanières, avantages fiscaux,...) le rapport avertit qu’il "devient nécessaire de repenser" ces réglementations.

"Les politiques en vigueur tendent à favoriser les producteurs de certains pays développés par rapport à ceux de la plupart des pays en développement", dénonce l’organisation.

La FAO juge que "ces politiques ont été coûteuses et ont eu tendance à introduire de nouvelles distorsions" sur les marchés.

Or, dans de nombreux pays, "la production de biocarburants n’est pas économiquement viable sans subventions", affirme la FAO, soulignant que "la principale exception concerne la production d’éthanol au Brésil", second producteur de biocarburant après les Etats-Unis et premier exportateur mondial.

La FAO reconnaît cependant que les biocarburants présentent des "opportunités" pour les pays producteurs pauvres.

Mais l’organisation souligne qu’elles seraient favorisées "par la suppression des subventions agricoles et des barrières commerciales".

En conclusion, l’organisation se prononce pour que les investissements privilégient la recherche sur les biocarburants de deuxième génération, "mieux à même de réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre" car ils ne sont pas produits à partir de matières premières alimentaires, mais de paille ou de bois.

AFP / 07 octobre 2008

(Secret) World Bank Report: Bio-fuels responsible for food crisis...

Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Friday July 4, 2008

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy