Food I Eat Again

I will have to eat biofuel from now onwords. And if I want to make money invest on companies like: Seed innovators Monsanto (MON, news, msgs) and Syngenta (SYT, news, msgs); fertilizer makers Potash of Saskatchewan (POT, news, msgs), Mosaic (MOS, news, msgs), CF Industries (CF, news, msgs) and Agrium (AGU, news, msgs); tractor maker Deere (DE, news, msgs); and, for exposure to the food futures themselves, the exchange-traded funds PowerShares DB Agriculture (DBA, news, msgs), iPath AIG Agriculture (JJA, news, msgs) and iPath AIG Grains (JJG, news, msgs).

Nice EU and UK passed bills n their respective paliaments to increase the production of biofuel in the future. Ha Ha. some of us petitioned the MPs and MEPs not to but to no avail. Funny init reading this article appeared.

This is what I said

Dear MEP,
I am writing to ask you to vote against increased EU biofuel targets as proposed by the European Commission in the draft Directive on renewable energy.

You may be aware of the overwhelming evidence published over the last few months that the large scale production of biofuels will
- have devastating effects on the world's most important habitats- have disastrous consequences for the poorest people and
- do little to tackle climate change.

Despite this evidence the European Commission has held on to its proposal to include a 10% target for biofuels by 2020.

The Commission proposes to avoid negative impacts from biofuels through the introduction of sustainability criteria.

In reality sustainability criteria fail to solve problems like the pressure biofuel crops exert on other agricultural land uses, pushing them into rainforests and other habitats (a problem known as leakage). And there are not even attempts to address social issues like land rights conflicts and the effects on the world's food prices.

If you feel you cannot vote against the target I would like to hear from you how you propose the problems of leakage and the social impacts of biofuels will be tackled. You can contact me by email or at the following address:

Flat 1 34, Badminton RoadBristolBS2 9QL

Yours sincerely,
Chris Bury
23 Feb 2008

Reply 1.

Dear Chris Bury,

Thank you for your email. I am of the belief that biofuels still present us with a greatopportunity, both for farmers, and to deal with our energy dependancy.However it is imperative that biofuel growth is sustainable.

I believe that the EU was not wrong to initially introduce ambitioustargets on the amount of fuel that should be replaced with biofuels butunfortunately many farmers in Britain have not felt they had the supportfrom the government to venture into biofuel production. The key to thelong-term viability of biofuels is ensuring our fuels are grown as closeto home as possible and that any growth is sustainable. Cutting down therainforest and digging up food crops when we have a world shortage offood is clearly not the best way to meet the targets.

However, with the future potential of second generation biofuels, whichare both cleaner and do not affect our ability to grow food, and with aproper accreditation scheme which can ensure that imports come fromsustainable sources, I still believe that biofuels can play an importantrole in our future energy needs. Therefore I do not support a furtherreduction in what is now a more modest target for biofuel use.


Yours sincerely, Neil Parish MEP

Reply 2

Dear Constituent

Please forgive my addressing you in this impersonal way but I have hadso many identical letters about biofuels that it is the only way I canreply quickly.

I do believe that biofuels have the potential to offer an alternativeform of energy that can help to alleviate Europe's dependence uponimported oil. Given that our transport sector is almost entirelydependent upon oil, the price of which doubled from 2003-6, biofuels mayoffer, in part, a means by which to cope with a severe security ofsupply challenge. Secondly, in an era in which climate change poses areal and significant threat, biofuels may offer greenhouse gas savings;the combustion of biofuels only releases carbon into the atmosphere thatwas absorbed by the biofuel crop during its growth. It is thereforehoped that biofuels may offer a carbon neutral solution to transport fuels.

The proposal to which you refer has not yet arrived in the Environment,Public Health and Food Safety Committee, of which I am a member. When itdoes, I agree with you that rather than blunder onwards towards such anarbitrary target with potentially weak sustainability criteria, weperhaps need to reassess what we are trying to do with biofuels andreconsider the whole approach. It is quite likely that the Parliamentreport will say something on similar lines and hopefully address theproblems of leakage and the social impacts of biofuels. How this will bedone will not be known until the rapporteur, the MEP responsible forsteering the dossier through the Parliament and the responsiblecommittees, has published his draft report.

Yours sincerely Caroline Jackson MEP


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