Food prices in France and around the globe could skyrocket due to biofuels, says Nestle chief.
March 25, 2008
The world must brace for a period of significant and lasting inflation in food prices because of demand from biofuels, according to head of global food giant Nestlé.
While many in France and the US applaud research into alternative fuels using corn or soybeans, called biofuels, for the contribution such fuels could make to energy independence and the environment, the head of food company Nestle sees disaster looming in the world food supply.
The chairman and chief executive of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, says there’ll be nothing left to eat if 20 per cent of the world’s oil demand is fulfilled by biofuels, as predicted. The Nestlé chairman cited population growth, rising demand from “the phenomena of India and China” and the use of food products by biofuel producers as causes of pressure in international food markets.
He said, in a speech in Zurich, Switzerland, that it was morally unacceptable and irresponsible to grant enormous subsidies to bio-energy. He also called it wrong to divert crops that should be used to feed poeple into fuel to feed the world’s hunger for energy.
Mr Brabeck-Letmathe says water, and land for cultivation, are becoming rarer, while biofuel demand is driving up the price of corn, soybeans and wheat.
Corn prices have risen about 60 per cent and wheat about 50 per cent over the last 12 months.
Meanwhile a report by 11 civil society groups argues that the rush for biofuels is already causing serious damage.
The report finds that biofuels from agriculture –called agrofuels - threaten to greatly accelerate climate change through the destruction of ecosystems and carbon sinks on which we depend for a stable climate. The rush to biofuels encourages intensive, industrial agriculture at the expense of sustainable food production.
“Monoculture plantations have been doing serious damage around the world for decades, but agrofuels represent a further intensification of the process, endangering what remains of global forest cover and climate. They also threaten the food sovereignty, cultural, human and land rights of indigenous peoples and local communities”, says Helena Paul of Econexus, one of the authors.
Last year Jean Ziegler, UN independent expert on food, called for a five-year moratorium on all initiatives to develop biofuels in his speech to the UN General Assembly.
France has long taken the lead in Europe on the production of biofuels using not only wheat and soybeans but also sugar beets. In September 2005, then Prime Minister of France Jean-Pierre Raffarin declared biofuels a national priority and called for an additional 800,000 tons of biofuels to be produced by the end of 2007. “Today’s decision will maintain France’s leading position in biofuels over the next three years,” the French ministry declared at the time.
New concerns about the food supply may dampen enthusiasm for biofuels in France and around the world.
Comments
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.