Policies promoting ethanol and biodiesel production and use in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world since the mid-2000s have had profound—and largely unintended—consequences on global food prices, agricultural land values, land acquisition, and food security in developing countries. They have also created regional opportunities in the form of agricultural investments, crop yield growth, and booming farm economies. Rising incomes in emerging economies are generating increased demand for transportation fuels, thus stimulating further growth of the global biofuel industry. This seminar explores the politics, economics, and global food security implications of the expanding biofuel sector. Several policy questions are raised, including the role of biofuel mandates on food prices, the role of trade policies for stabilizing food prices in an era of increasingly tight demand, and the role of land policies and institutions for feedstock production and income distribution in the developing world. This is the eighth talk in FSE’s Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series.
In this rant, I look into Big Palm Oil’s efforts to undermine the EPA’s correct decision to label this evil substance as an environmentally unsustainable option in creating “biofuels,” a catch-all phrase with all kinds of snakes slithering around inside it.