The Earth is not enough

Energy used to plough the land, to seed, to harvest and to transport is emitting more CO2 than the plants can capture. If the crop is not growing well, you can already emit more carbon than you save (Carbon per hectare). The thing is, when we have to evaluate the greenhouse gas emitted in the agricultural process, that gas does not have a national boundary so we have to do the analyses at global level. Whatever I do in Romania, Italy or Brazil it does not matter to the air because all gas ends up in the atmosphere. Where will the biofuels be grown (Land availability)? Agricultural land has increased in geometrical progression along the last decades. In Europe we are using less land, but if one looks at what is happening if Latin America or other parts of the world, we will see that Europe is importing soy beans, for example, which were grown on 50 million hectares outside. While Europe saves, say, 5-7 million hectares, it puts the claim of land requirement to other parts of the world.

What counts is what happens globally so we are using more land for our food production than in the last few decades and the question is will we need more or less land to grow and feed the increasing number of people. People are becoming richer so they will require richer diets. For the coming decades we will need more agricultural land in the world ONLY to feed the people, around 200 million hectares more ONLY for food crops and not taking into account biofuels. This is the background of the debate and on top of that we need biofuels. Each and every hectare that we use for biofuel, it will put the claim on even more land.

In the end, if we need more land it should come from somewhere. We will not use desserts so whatever we have in expansion are areas that are fertile and that yield a reasonable production. These are always the FORESTS. And when they are all chopped, we will need another planet for our food crops.

What is Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC)?

A recent study by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has revealed the scale of environmental impacts from increased use of biofuels until 2020. The IEEP report reveals that, unless the policy changes, an area over twice the size of Belgium will be converted into fields and plantations because of the anticipated increase in biofuel consumption. This will cause an extra 27-56 million tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions per year – the equivalent of adding an extra 12-26 million cars on Europe’s roads by 2020. Unless the policy changes, biofuels that will come to the EU market would be on average 81 to 167% worse for the climate than the fossil fuels they were designed to replace, as a result of ILUC.

Clearly the EU needs to become much better in selecting biofuels that don’t displace large amounts of agricultural land. That will not be possible until GHG emissions from ILUC are taken into account when calculating the carbon footprint of biofuels.

Friends of the Earth Europe has made an animated film that summarizes brilliantly what ILUC is.

Summary of the Project

The main purpose of this cross-border project is to place the problem of ‘food security versus energy security’ on the political agenda of the Black Sea region. Large rural areas in these important agricultural countries remain uncultivated given the lack of state subsidies and poor market power of small entrepreneurs. These ultimately abandon lands to the will of businesses that naturally follow the ‘higher-profit’ logic of the market preferring ‘fuel over food’ when choosing to cultivate land. The social/political implications are severe: higher poverty, economic migration, environmental damage.

The objectives of this project are the following:

1. Identifying and analysing potential and existing threats for the region (in terms of the ‘food security versus energy security’); To accomplish this objective, the first three months of the project the team will collect and share data available at each national level as well as analyse and compare data in order to produce a comprehensive Regional Report.

2. Raising public awareness on these threats at the regional level; The information and data gathered by all project partners will be presented and debated with the occasion of an international workshop that will gather representatives of specialized NGOs from all countries of the Black Sea. The workshop’s final outcome is the setting up of a regional (informal) think-tank.

3. Encouraging public participation to advocate for responsible political choices with respect to the issue of ‘food security versus energy security’. This objective will be achieved through the last activity of the project: information dissemintation. In the last three months of the project the team will publicize the results of the entire project and its Report.