UN dissects bioenergy: Part 3
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series of posts, we talked about how the UN's cautious optimism regarding biofuels: “Unless new policies are enacted... the environmental and social damage could in some cases outweigh the benefits (of bioenergy).”
Advantages of bioenergy for agricultural producers
The market for biofuel raw materials offers new and rapidly growing opportunities for agricultural producers, according to the UN's report:
“Bioenergy can make energy services more widely and cheaply available in remote rural areas, supporting productivity growth in agriculture and other sectors with positive implications for food availability and access.”
Modern bioenergy can also help the 1.6 billion people worldwide who lack access to electricity in their homes, and the 2.4 billion who rely on straw, dung and other traditional biomass fuels to meet their energy requirements.
Overall, in making decisions, policy makers “should ensure that food security considerations are given priority,” the document stresses.
Similarly, the UN study criticizes the existence of trade barriers that currently limit ethanol imports by some countries.
Thus, it warns that restricting imports of more efficiently produced biofuels while simultaneously mandating the blending of biofuel with fossil fuels at home could divert more land than necessary from food production.
As to the implications for agriculture in general, the study noted that, “at their best, liquid biofuel products can enrich farmers by helping to add value to their products. But at their worst, there may be a concentration of ownership that could drive the world’s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty.”
Possibly, “the biofuel economy of the future will be characterized by a combination of different production types: large, capital-intensive businesses, farmer co-ops that compete with large companies, and cases where liquid biofuels are produced on a smaller scale for local use.”
”Regardless of the scale of production, one thing is clear:the more involved farmers are in the production, processing and use of biofuels, the more likely they are to share in the benefits,” the UN document notes.
From E-campo, with permission...
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Tags: alternative energy, bioethanol, bioenergy, biofuel, sustainable energy, UN, United Nations, UN Energy
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