Tag Archives: food
Food Price Fears Push EU Lawmakers To Put A Lid On Biofuels Growth
Published 12 September 2013 The European Parliament has voted to limit the use of fuels made from food crops because of fears that biofuels can push up grain prices or damage the climate, further undermining the once booming industry. Lawmakers voting in Strasbourg on Wednesday (11 September) set a ceiling on the use of such fuels at 6% of overall transport fuel demand in the European Union in 2020. Although slightly higher than the 5% cap proposed by the European Commission in October, it deals a blow to EU biofuel producers by effectively preventing them from increasing current output. In 2009, the bloc set a target for a 10% share of renewable energy in transport, with almost all of it to come from so-called first generation crop-based fuels. Biofuels, such as ethanol made from sugar or biodiesel from rapeseed, are blended with conventional transport fuels and added to vehicle fuel tanks. They were originally intended to reduce transport carbon emissions and cut Europe’s dependence on imported oil. But faced with claims that Europe’s thirst for biofuels was driving up global food prices, and scientific evidence that some biofuels are more harmful to the climate than even conventional fossil fuels, the Commission was forced into a rethink. “We can’t stick with a policy that has such a negative effect on the countries of the south and on food prices. At the end of the day, the parliament has voted in favour of an acceptable limit,” French Liberal MEP Corrine Lepage, who led the parliamentary debate, said after the vote. With first generation biofuel consumption already at around 5% of total EU transport demand, and with almost enough installed production capacity meet the 10% target, a limit of 5 or 6% would call time on the once booming industry and force some existing plants to close. Lawmakers backed an amendment that would force energy companies from 2020 to take account of the indirect emissions caused by crop-based biofuels, which increase overall demand for land and, as a result, encourage rainforest clearance or draining peatland. That would effectively ban the use of biodiesel from oil crops such as rapeseed, palm and soy, which according to the EU’s scientific models are more damaging than conventional diesel when their overall impact on the environment is taken into account. The biodiesel industry says the scientific models used in the studies are highly uncertain and based on flawed assumptions. Algae and waste In order to try to make up the shortfall created by the cap on first-generation fuels, the parliament said the EU should set a new 2.5% sub-target for the use of advanced, non-crop fuels made from algae or agricultural waste in 2020. A coalition of industry and environmental groups – including the European Climate Foundation and Danish advanced biofuel producer Dong Energy – have said that full sustainable use of agricultural and forestry waste could supply 13% of EU road transport fuel by 2020. “This potential will only be realised if EU biofuel and related industries are given investment certainty and a stable policy framework by the European Parliament and Council,” the group said in a statement. One aspect of the vote that offered a glimmer of hope to the biofuel industry was that lawmakers demanded further talks about the rules before opening negotiations with EU countries to finalise them. With EU governments yet to finalise their common position, talks on the proposals look likely to extend into next year. If they are not concluded by April, European Parliament elections scheduled for the following month could push back the law until 2015. Several European governments are opposed to capping the use of biofuels as some dispute claims the demand for crop-based oils drives deforestation and food insecurity in other parts of the world. They fear the collapse of the conventional biofuels industry after a number of countries had already begun investing in the feedstock-based fuels before the EU began advocating a move away from them. POSITIONS: French Liberal MEP Corinne Lepage , who steered the negotiations in Parliament, said MEPs had voted to set “a reasonable cap on first generation biofuels,” at 6% of overall transport fuel consumption. “This is an important signal that support should be focused on advanced biofuels from 2020,” Lepage said. “I regret however that the Parliament did not give a negotiation mandate that would have allowed the file to be concluded without further delay in order to give industry certainty regarding its investments”, she added. Speaking for the industry, the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) underlined that Parliament had “de facto” refused to give a mandate for negotiations with member states over the proposed biofuels legislation, effectively postponing a decision until after the 2014 European elections. In particular, the EBB stressed the Parliament’s doubts over proposals to measure land displacement caused by biofuels production – so-called Indirect Land Use Change, or ILUC. “The rather indecisive results seen today show that doubt persists in using a rather young discipline for policy making,” says Raffaello Garofalo EBB secretary general , adding that including ILUC factors, even for reporting, would convey the wrong signal to citizens. “European regulators should be proud of the commitment of the EU biodiesel industry to promote a greener economy, foster agriculture and support industrial jobs. European biodiesel should set an example for higher standards, not be punished based on inconclusive science,” said Garofalo, adding: “Europe cannot afford to threaten nearly 220,000 jobs based on simplistic ILUC assumptions.” Turning to advanced biofuels, the EBB said Parliament had chosen “a schizophrenic proposal maintaining present double-counting support but excluding Used Cooking Oil and Animal Fats from the 2.5% specific target allocated to advanced biofuels.” “Waste and residues based biodiesel provide up to 95% greenhouse gas reduction compared to fossil fuels and it is not justified not to count it among advanced biofuels. Should the European Union be truly committed to reduce CO2 in transport, reliance on effective solution such as biodiesel from waste and residues should be fostered and biodiesel from waste and residues should be included in the advanced sub-target,” concluded Garofalo. The Greens/EFA group in Parliament welcomed the “tentative steps” taken by MEPs to “address flaws” in the EU’s biofuels policy but said problems remained regarding displacement of food production. Green climate spokesperson Bas Eickhout said: “Ensuring that the emissions resulting from indirect land use change are accounted for under the fuel quality directive from 2020 onwards will help ensure the EU is not promoting the use of biofuels that clearly have a negative climate impact. This would help steer investors and the fuel industry away from bad biofuels in the medium-term. “However, regrettably, a narrow majority voted against starting negotiations with the Council to conclude this legislation. This will further delay the urgently needed action to tackle climate-damaging biofuels.” Eickhout also regretted that lawmakers also failed to include emissions resulting from indirect land use change in the calculation of greenhouse gas savings limit for biofuels under the EU’s renewables directive.” This contradictory vote ignores the overwhelming evidence that Europe’s biofuel consumption is leading to the destruction of tropical rainforests, with major greenhouse gas implications. There will consequently be no guarantee that land-based biofuels perform better than conventional oil-based fuels in the near future.” “It is also seriously disappointing that Parliament voted to allow a 6% share of land-based biofuels like food crops in the overall fuel mix. Feeding crops into cars has fuelled rising food prices and rainforest destruction and the EU should not be further exacerbating these trends by promoting the use of agricultural land for fuel. We should be shunning the use of food crops for fuel altogether but this 6% ‘cap’ is clearly too high. It is highly questionable why the EU should continue promoting biofuels without putting essential climate safeguards in place.” Commenting on the vote, Nuša Urbancic, clean fuels manager for Transport & Environment , said: “Today’s vote calls into question the willingness of the European Parliament to fix the failed EU biofuels policy. Until an agreement is reached, it is uncertain for investors and the environment what the future of biofuels will be. What is certain though is that Europeans will have to keep paying for another seven years for biofuels that pollute more than the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace.” Commenting on the Parliament’s vote, Imke Lübbeke , r enewable energy senior policy officer at WWF European Policy Office said: “While it is positive that MEPs have drawn a line in the sand and introduced a limit for biofuels, EU legislation needs to do more. Parliament wants to delay accounting for indirect land use change from biofuels – a significant problem – until 2020, and even only in one of the two relevant pieces of legislation, leaving a major gap. “Their action today does not give the market the right incentives to provide cleaner biofuels for the European transport sector. It is now up to the EU Member States to act responsibly, and improve the Parliament’s position, helping Europe on its transition to a more sustainable energy future.” Rob Vierhout, the secretary general of the European ethanol industry group ePure , said: “It is disappointing to see that the European Parliament has decided to significantly reduce the market for conventional biofuels in Europe. At a time when we need to boost our economy it is difficult to see why MEPs agree to curtail jobs and investment in a sector that helps Europe to grow the production of clean and sustainable fuels.” Greenpeace was more radical, saying in a statement that MEPs had “supported the increased use of environmentally damaging biofuels, while at the same time calling on the EU to account for the destructive effects of these fuels on food production and greenhouse gas emissions.” “Today’s incoherent vote was clearly the result of horse-trading. The Parliament wants the EU to drive on both sides of the road: to recognise that biofuels made from food crops are destructive to the environment, but to continue supporting them politically and financially,” Greenpeace EU forests policy director Sebastien Risso . Greenpeace called on EU countries to “stop and reverse” the expansion of harmful biofuels. “The full carbon footprint of biofuels must be accounted for and public support and subsidies for environmentally and socially damaging biofuels must be phased out. Priority must be given to real solutions for greener transport, including innovative energy efficiency technologies to reduce energy consumption in transport, green mobility in cities, and cars and trains which run on renewable electricity.” Global anti-poverty group Oxfam congratulated MEPs for having avoided “the worst case scenario”. But it said Parliament was “still guilty of neglecting the needs of both the people and the planet”, saying a 6% cap on biofuels is “far above current levels of consumption”. “Today’s vote also introduces a new 7.5% binding target for the share of bioethanol in petrol; this would mean that by 2020 Europeans will have to buy 2.5 times more grain based biofuels than they currently do,” said Marc Olivier Herman , Oxfam’s EU biofuels expert . “In their efforts to appease the biofuels industry and agricultural lobbyists, MEPs have failed in their duty to represent the best interests of their electorate and the one in eight people going to bed hungry each night. As a result, millions will continue to be susceptible to volatile food prices, deforestation and further land-grabbing. EU governments must now pick up their slack.” NEXT STEPS: 2013/2014 : EU member states to agree common position on the proposal 2014/2015 : EU Parliament and member states expected to conclude negotiation on the proposed legislation EurActiv.com with Reuters Continue reading
The Future Of Farming: Q&A With Futurist Glen Hiemstra
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 by Farm and Dairy Staff Share Farm and Dairy spoke with Glen Hiemstra, founder of Futurist.com , about the future of farming and agriculture. Glen Hiemstra is a respected expert on future trends. He’s worked with companies like The Home Depot, Boeing, Land O Lakes, John Deere and Microsoft. Glen has also advised government agencies and organizations like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration Advanced Research program and the Washington Forest Protection Association. Glen often meets with companies to discuss emerging trends in economics, demographics, energy, the environment, science, communications and technology. Here’s what Glen had to say: F&D: What exactly is a futurist? What do you do? GH: A futurist is somebody who explores three questions about the future. The three questions are: What is probable in the future? What is possible, sort of what’s outside the boundaries of the way we usually think about our business, or what is a sort of “black swan” event that could happen, that we might want to take into account? What’s preferred is the third question. That’s the strategic planning question. Futurists like myself usually give talks or seminars about the first two questions. People are really interested in future trends and where the world might be going, according to those who watch for trends. Organizations tend to be really interested in that third question, “What’s our preferred future?” That’s essentially what we do: presentations, writing and consulting work around those questions. Futurists, like myself, tend to be called when people are interested in a little bit longer term view. Most organizations do regular strategic planning cycles, maybe looking 5 years ahead. But now and then they want to look 10 years ahead, and that’s when they call me. F&D: You’re not looking into a crystal ball, right? There’s no wizardry involved. What kind of methods do you use to try to accurately predict these future trends? GH: Well, there are two or three primary methodologies. One is typically called trend-analysis. It’s just a kind of labor-intensive collection of data material from whatever sources you can find it. Whether it is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or in the case of agriculture, The Farm Bureau. It might be demographic trend information. It might also be cultural trend information that you get by reading other people’s opinions about it and keeping track of things over time. While there are some computerized tools for forecasting, which are available, which I’m not trained in and do not use myself, most futurists still, in the end, rely on good old pattern recognition. What makes sense. If you logically look at this, how does it all add up? F&D: Now that we got those two questions out of the way, let’s move on to farming and agriculture. Briefly explain to me what you think the farm of the future could look like? GH: Super question. I am actually thinking about that now because of a talk I have coming up with the directors of the Farm Credit Bank, though they want me to talk less about agriculture and more about big-picture stuff. Here’s a couple thoughts on what a future farm will look like. Number one, undoubtedly, a future farm will be much more attuned to the biological basis of the soil. Not that we don’t know a lot about that now and we don’t pay attention to it. But, there are concerns because the world will need much more food between now and 2050, because of the growing global population and the growing appetite of the global population. So the question is how are we going to do that? And the big keyword in every industry, including agriculture, is sustainability. How can we do that in a way which produces more, but at the same time preserves the ability of the soil and farmland to produce in the future. Every year that clicks by over the next 20 years, that’s going to be more of an issue. The good news is, we’ll know more about how to do that. So I think the farm of the future will ultimately be doing some things differently in terms of using fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and so on. That will evolve. It will not be the same, but exactly what it will look like isn’t clear to me. I could vacillate in the big debate between what we now think of as traditional agriculture versus what we think of as organic agriculture, which is of course in old-fashioned terms, more traditional. How that will all play out is, I think, the big question. The reason that’s a big question is because it will have to deal with the ability of the soil to provide enough food and with what happens with the evolving climate. F&D: Sure The second thing dealing with the future of agriculture that I find very intriguing is that I’m pretty persuaded by the growing interest in the local food movement or the organic food movement. Basically, it comes down to especially local food. I think that we will see, because you can do it economically, there’s a whole generation interested in it, and it kind of fits in the value shift going on around the world, there will be a viable local agricultural community in places where it’s sort of disappeared. Whole regions are interested in that, New York, Washington and part of the Midwest. We will still see growth in very large-scale agriculture, but we’ll also see equivalent growth in very small-scale, even personal scale, agriculture. This interest in healthy, local food, I don’t see that disappearing. I see it increasing and it has to have an impact over the next two decades. F&D: Is it fair to say that farming and agriculture in these metropolitan areas will be more important moving forward? GH: Yes. It will be more important. With a co-author, Denis Walsh, a sustainability futurist from Canada, I’ve written a book called “Millennial City.” It’s really a look at the future of cities. F&D: We’ve got a couple questions here submitted to us via social media. Charles wants to know if non-traditional meats, goats, lambs, emu, will become a larger part of our diets and the market moving forward. GH: Oh man, that’s something I have not looked into at all. My off the cuff response is that I don’t think so. I will give one caveat to that. They will continue to be small niche and specialty foods.The caveat is the growing diversity of the U.S. population. By 2040, according to the Census Bureau, the non-Hispanic white population will be the minority population of The United States. That means you have many more people of color who come from historical cultures where those meats are a traditional form of protein. One could imagine that in a more diverse, ethnic culture, some of that market could grow just based on ethnic drivers. F&D: Carol from Greenford, Ohio wants to know if you think we’ll see an increase in GMO fruits and vegetables in the future? On that subject, what will the role of GMO fruits and vegetables be? GH: Yes, we will see an increase in genetically modified, but I think that will be accompanied by an increase of regulatory requirements for labeling. That’s on the ballot here in the state of Washington, I know it got defeated in California. I haven’t read any polls, but I’ll be surprised if it does not pass in the state of Washington. I think the consumer will be fine with genetically modified foods, so long as they know what they’re getting. The rate of increase of genetically modified foods will be highly related to what happens with the climate and food security and whether it’ll be biologically necessary to grow genetically modified foods to makes sure we grow enough food. Bottom line, I do think we’ll see more genetically modified food, but it’ll be in an environment in which there will be a requirement for labeling. F&D: What can small farmers do to stay relevant and competitive over the next 20 or 30 years. GH: Two, maybe three things. If you’re a small farm, it’s sort of imperative to be on the sustainability bandwagon. I haven’t studied this, but I’m familiar with the film director Peter Bick. Peter made “Carbon Nation,” a documentary. He is persuading me that there is a growing understanding of how to rebuild a healthier soil using some fairly old and traditional farming methods, which don’t work on the super-large scale. When I say get on the sustainability wagon, I’m really saying learn everything new about the building of soil as a carbon sink. Small farms that could turn their land into a carbon sink could become more valuable in a world in which we go to a carbon trading system, which is occurring in California. Though we’re a long ways from that politically in the U.S., depending on what happens with the global climate, you could see a very rapid shift into a system that the ability to sequester carbon is highly valued. F&D: What’s a “carbon sink?” GH: If you’re growing grazing land, and your land is being maintained in such a way that your roots go back to the old prairie kind of root systems which were deeper and more robust than we have in the Midwest these days, those roots soak up carbon. They basically take carbon out of the air. That can all be calculated. You can look at how many acres and if that many acres pulls the following amount of carbon out of the air. Therefore on the carbon-trading system you could be paid for doing that. That’s all kind of fringe stuff yet, at this point. We won’t really know for a decade, or two, how that plays out. But it’s an opportunity that the film director [Peter Bick], who is making a film on the subject, thinks is something for smaller farmers to look at. I’m not sure how it’ll apply to the individual family-farm, but it’s something to pay attention to. The other thing is, if you’re part of the local-food movement, using the Internet. People want to know where their food is from. Getting into that game. Relatively small family farm operations become super stars on the internet. F&D: Do you see drones in the future of ag? GH: Yes! That’s a great question. Sure, why not? Will every farm have a drone that the farm manager/operator/owner can fly over the field and measure and observe stuff? Related to that is the potential of the so called “internet of things,” such as a project that is putting sensors in forest land to alert people sooner of forest fires. It’s quite easy to imagine more and more embedded and implanted sensors on a person’s property, giving constant data. Drones? Yea, that’s a really good one. Sure, why not? F&D: Do you think there’s going to be a time when the grain markets aren’t controlled by the weather? Because of the way genetics is changing crops, do you see us going a different route in the future? GH: That would be a very distant future… I say that, but I suppose somebody could come up with a genetic modification tomorrow that changes the whole picture over night. The weather’s very powerful, and the globe is a very big place. You can look at some of the climate change scenarios and look at the maps of the potential drought areas and drought areas. OK, I don’t care what you do genetically, try to grow grain on this massive area of land with no water for 10 years. It’s not going to happen. Though clearly, there’s been some improvements with drought tolerance and salt tolerance in crops. There is some interesting work going on with organic kelp based and other biological fertilizers. They’re showing some pretty good results in Africa and California and some other places. They include the ability to increase yield in conditions of drought, but they can’t overcome catastrophic level droughts. My guess is, no. The weather will still be a factor 50 years from now. F&D: When we started this conversation, we talked about the magic year 2050, when the food supply will have to double. Are we going to be able to do that, do you think? Or will we face a famine? GH: I’ve actually heard bigger numbers than that. If the global class continues to grow, then the numbers could be even more than double. I think the odds are that we’ll be able to figure out how to do that. It’ll require a lot of innovation. It could be innovation on the organic side, or it could be a new kind of agriculture. It might not look like the 19th century agriculture or the 20th century agriculture. Humans are inventive when they have to be. F&D: Do you have a positive outlook when it comes to the future of agriculture? GH: Yes, absolutely I do. Agriculture has shown an astonishing ability to produce food. Not that long ago, I don’t have the exact time, but it used to take 6,000 acres to provide enough food for one person for one year. Now we’re down to half an acre or less. That’s an amazing record. Though the rest of the world lags behind the U.S. in terms of that record, they will catch up. On the large scale I’m pretty optimistic. On the small scale, I think that we’ll see more people participating in this local food and urban farming movement. To me, that’s very optimistic. What we know is that an increasing percentage of the global population moves to, and lives in, cities, which is counter-intuitive to what I just said about small farms. They will want food grown within 250, 350 miles. And that means more local agriculture in and around cities. I’m very fascinated by the very futuristic, mostly still on the drawing board, images of future cities with large food-growing operations within the city. On the facades of high-rise buildings, or various kinds of hydroponic or fast-growing environments. In part two, Glen answers questions from Farm and Dairy’s online community. He then addresses the idea of drone in agriculture and then gives an optimistic view on the future of farming. Continue reading
Trade and Environment Review 2013
Book Information UN Symbol: UNCTAD/DITC/TED/2012/3 Order from UN Publications Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing Full Report ( 4979.96 KB ) Highlight Developing and developed countries alike need a paradigm shift in agricultural development: from a “green revolution” to a “truly ecological intensification” approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers. We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agro-ecological system that provides quite a number of public goods and services (e.g. water, soil, landscape, energy, biodiversity, and recreation) UNCTAD’s Trade and Environment Review 2013 (TER13) contends. TER13 highlights that the required transformation is much more profound than simply tweaking the existing industrial agricultural system. Rather, what is called for is a better understanding of the multi-functionality of agriculture, its pivotal importance for pro-poor rural development and the significant role it can play in dealing with resource scarcities and in mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, the sheer scale at which modified production methods would have to be adopted, the significant governance issues, the power asymmetries’ problems in food input and output markets as well as the current trade rules for agriculture pose considerable challenges. TER13, entitled Wake up Before it is Too Late: Make Agriculture Truly Sustainable Now for Food Security in a Changing Climate was released on 18 September 2013. More than 60 international experts have contributed their views to a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and the most suitable strategic approaches for dealing holistically with the inter-related problems of hunger and poverty, rural livelihoods, social and gender inequity, poor health and nutrition, and climate change and environmental sustainability – one of the most interesting and challenging subjects of present development discourse. Agricultural development, the report underlines, is at a true crossroads. By way of illustration, food prices in the period 2011 to mid-2013 were almost 80% higher than for the period 2003-2008. Global fertilizer use increased by 8 times in the past 40 years, although global cereal production has scarcely doubled at the same time. The growth rates of agricultural productivity have recently declined from 2% to below 1% per annum. The two global environmental limits that have already been crossed (nitrogen contamination of soils and waters and biodiversity loss) were caused by agriculture. GHG emissions from agriculture are not only the single biggest source of global warming in the South, besides the transport sector, they are also the most dynamic. The scale of foreign land acquisitions (often also termed land grabbing) dwarfs the level of Official Development Assistance, the former being 5-10 times higher in value than the latter in recent years. Most important of all, despite the fact that the world currently already produces sufficient calories per head to feed a global population of 12-14 billion, hunger has remained a key challenge. Almost one billion people chronically suffer from starvation and another billion are mal-nourished. Some 70% of these people are themselves small farmers or agricultural laborers. Therefore, hunger and mal-nutrition are not phenomena of insufficient physical supply, but results of prevailing poverty, and above all problems of access to food. Enabling these people to become food self-sufficient or earn an appropriate income through agriculture to buy food needs to take center stage in future agricultural transformation. Furthermore, the current demand trends for excessive biofuel and concentrate animal feed use of cereals and oil seeds, much too high meat-based diets and post-harvest food waste are regarded as given, rather than challenging their rational. Questionably, priority in international policy discussions remains heavily focused on increasing industrial agricultural production, mostly under the slogan “growing more food at less cost to the environment”. The strategy recommended to developing countries of relying on international markets to meet staple food demand, while specializing in the production and export of ‘lucrative’ cash crops has not produced the intended results, because it relied on low staple food prices and no shortage of supply in international markets, conditions that have drastically changed since the turn of the century. Globalization has also encouraged excessive specialization, increasing scale of production of few crops and enormous cost pressure. All this has aggravated the environmental crisis of agriculture and reduced agricultural resilience. What is now required is a shift towards diverse production patterns that reflect the multi-functionality of agriculture and enhance close nutrient cycles. Moreover, as environmental externalities are mainly not internalized, carbon taxes are the rare exception rather than the rule and carbon-offset markets are largely dysfunctional – all factors that would prioritize regional/local food production through ‘logical’ market mechanisms – trade rules need to allow a higher regional focus of agriculture along the lines of “as much regionalized/localized food production as possible; as much traded food as necessary”. Climate change will drastically impact agriculture, primarily in those developing countries with the highest future population growth, i.e. in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Against this background, the fundamental transformation of agriculture may well turn out to be one of the biggest challenges, including for international security, of the 21st century. Much slower agricultural productivity growth in the future, a quickly rising population in the most resource-constrained and climate-change-exposed regions and a burgeoning environmental crises of agriculture are the seeds for mounting pressures on food security and the related access to land and water. This is bound to increase the frequency and severity of riots, caused by food-price hikes, with concomitant political instability, and international tension, linked to resource conflicts and migratory movements of staving populations. Downloads Trade and Environment Review 2013 – Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate (UNCTAD/DITC/TED/2012/3) 18 Sep 2013, 4980.0 KB Continue reading
