NOTE: Good article, worth reading in full.
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Biofuel push leads to world hunger, economist says
By Cassandra Kyle
Saskatoon StarPhoenix, November 18 2009
http://www.canada.com/news/Biofuel+push+leads+world+hunger+economist+says/2238202/story.html

SASKATOON - The planet can produce enough food to feed all of its people a European diet several times over, but the global food crisis persists due in a large part to such misplaced government priorities as the push for biofuels, a Netherlands-based doctor of economics said in Saskatoon Wednesday.

What's more, said Roel Jongeneel of the Wageningen University, the nine billion people expected to populate the planet in 2050 can still be fed a healthy diet with plenty of food left over if world leaders focus more on protecting agriculture and less on growing grains for use as transportation fuels.

"At this moment already we can feed all these people and we are not doing it, so that's why I say we have our priorities not right," Jongeneel said at The Farm Forum Event.

Indeed, the economist said more than one billion people are undernourished and 22,000 people die every day due to malnutrition or related diseases.

He said the root of the problem lies with the cost of food, which in many areas is too expensive for many people to afford. In 2007, Jongeneel said, prices rose on demand for biofuels and, more recently, the worldwide economic downturn has prevented people from buying food ”” a basic right under the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"Even though food prices have come down a bit (because of the recession), we still see an increasing number of people deal with hunger," he said.

The increase in arable acres devoted to growing plants for the biofuel industry has a very real effect on the food crisis, he added.

"There could be the food/fuel competition, which will also play an increasing role, and if you really push this biofuel issue it will make the whole thing different because they create such a large claim on lands," he said.

Saskatchewan does its part to provide for the world's hungry by exporting grain and potash, said Jongeneel, but some countries that need the most food are unable to properly distribute tools such as fertilizer because of the cost.

"In India, for example, they have a massive subsidization scheme to make fertilizer more cheap and to increase crop conditions . . . but at the same time they have the price for the product so low, farmers still don't have the money to buy this, even when it's subsidized."

Meanwhile, some African countries, the economist said, are taxing their burgeoning agricultural industries, making fertilizer purchases impossible and sustainable profits an unreachable dream for many farmers.

Jongeneel calls for international policies to be put in place to protect the agriculture industry in developing countries.

By 2050, he hopes diplomatic barriers to food growth and consumption will be breached, making hunger a scourge of the past.

"From a technical point of view we are able to feed the people now but also in 2050, maybe even two or three times . . . but as I said it's important to get our priorities straight because for years we have had a chronic food crisis," he said.