Grim choice: food or fuel
By Eddie Cunninngham, November 13 2007
Source: Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/farming/grim-choice-food-or-fuel-1217683.html
IT was interesting to hear Mairead McGuinness talk recently about the potential dangers in the intensifying battle between food and fuel for a place on the farm. America is steadily devoting more acreage to crops for conversion to biofuels than for human consumption. It is a scenario that will increasingly impinge on Irish farmers.
Biofuel cars are becoming more common here and a certain amount of the fuel base they use — whey in most instances — is produced here. It is a small amount of self sufficiency, but something to be developed in a world where the $100 barrel of oil is expected to become a regular price. More vehicles are being introduced that are capable of running on conventional petrol, high concentrations of bioethanol and any blend in between. Such flexi-fuel vehicles can run on E85, an 85pc concentration of bioethanol, and a small network of pumps is gradually being established to cater for such vehicles.
I have driven quite a few of these vehicles, the Ford Focus FFV, the Volvo S40, and the Saab 9-5 and 9-3, to mention a few. The thing is, they work, and work quite well. And providing the ethanol for them (via crop production) could mean really good news for farmers, as there is a foreseeable demand.
In simple terms, courtesy of Auto Insight, if you’re going to release carbon, it’s better to release that which has only just been trapped (by plants) and which would be released anyway (through the decomposition of the plants), than that which has been locked away (within fossil fuels) and which would remain there without our intervention.
So, is there a real future for farmers under pressure from world prices in many areas? I believe there is because we haven’t even begun to discover what we can produce here and a tremendous opportunity may be about to open up. But there are pitfalls in other areas. Essentially, crops for biofuels mean fewer acres for food production.
As Ms McGuinness asked: “How can sufficient areas of agricultural land be brought into use to meet the potential demand for biofuels, without compromising food production or putting increased pressure on habitats?” She says we need to be careful as the EU sets ambitious targets for renewable energy generation — a 20pc share by 2020 (and half of that derived from biofuels).
We do not want to copy a trend emerging in some US ‘corn belt states’, where there has been an explosion of interest in ethanol distilleries to such an extent that cows are competing with cars for corn. That is driving up the price of the food. And tipping the balance could leave us short of a more fundamental energy source we all need — food. She has a valid point and she is right to raise it because, looking ahead to the budget next month, there is no doubt we will all be viewing the emissions of cars in a different light as a new tax regime begins to kick in.
Finance minister, Brian Cowen, is widely expected to begin linking emissions to taxes. And that will make cars such as flexi-fuel vehicles an attractive proposition if the current 50pc VRT rebate is continued. So, more demand will create more demand and the spiral starts. The battle here is truly being joined and it is one that will raise hopes and fears in equal measure. Something tells me the fuel or food debate is about to go up a gear here.