Biofuels threatens the food supply in developing and poor nations ?

December 13, 2007 the Vice-president of the Russian National Biofuel Association Alex Ablaev and the President of the Yu.A.Ovchinnikov Russian Biotechnologists Society, the Chairman of Board of Directors of the Russian National Biofuel Association Raif Vasilov took part in the program "The personal opinion" of the broadcasting station "Radio of Russia".

They explained the latest food price spike in the world by the following reasons:
Firstly, a rise of food prices has been mainly provoked by increasing demand for corn and oil in China and India due to the growth of prosperity and correspondingly much more food consume.Secondly, over the last few years Argentina and Canada, the world's largest producers of crops, failed to produce enough crop.And only lastly, biofuels can be called the only the last reason driving up the food prices.

As the matter of fact, biofuels manufacturing will continue to grow due to the surge in demand for less-polluting renewable energy sources offering a more practical long-term energy solution. Nevertheless it is unlikely that biofuels could provoke starvation in the poor countries. A significant part of biofuels in USA is based on plants, grass and non-edible crops. Beside that the acting legislation makes the biofuels' production based on edible crops nonremunerative. Currently, there are two principal kinds of liquid biofuels for motor vehicles: bioethanol based on any starch- or sugar-contained crops (cereals, rice, maize, sugarbeet, sugarcane, etc.) and biodiesel based on any oil-yielding crops or any fats, including adipose. Bioethanol is a regular ethyl alcohol containing water less 1%, but as fuel it is much better than petrol regarding an octane number and ecology impact. Biodiesel is the ethers of fatty acids with the same properties as a regular diesel.

Biofuel production is becoming price-competitive with fuels in use at present due to recently skyrocketing petrol prices of oil, oil products and conventional fuels. Thus, making bio-fuel cultivation becomes presently economically viable for farmers as an alternative crop. So it provides very soon a competitiveness of biofuels in relation to regular fuels.

Дата:  18.01.2008

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