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Catholic Rural
Commentaries
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Using food crops to fuel the future? Question of the common good
March 2008
Robert Gronski, NCRLC policy coordinator
National Catholic Rural Life Conference
The fuel of the future is looking like amber waves of grain and fermentable sugars. In this era of "peak oil", industry and governments are looking at converted plant matter to fuel our machines. The current generation of "biofuels" like corn ethanol and soy diesel competes with our daily human diet. Will the future find a sustainable balance of food and fuel production?
Agrofuels, as another name for biofuels, are combustible fuels made from organic material: living plants. Besides corn, plants like wheat, sugarcane, sugar beets, palm oil, and cassava are used for ethanol production. Palm oil can also be used for biodiesel, along with sunflowers, canola, vegetable oils, and animal fat.
Over the past few years the demand for agrofuels has skyrocketed, resulting in industrial-size refineries requiring vast amounts of biomass stock and water. It takes up to six gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. The distillation process also takes large quantities of fossil fuels to cook the starches and boil off the ethanol. Refineries are becoming more efficient, but inputs will continue to be significant. So are agrofuels worth it?
Challenges and implications
In the U.S., per capita consumption of fossil fuels is more than five times the global average. Americans hold onto a standard of living that is dependent on industrial growth and cheap fossil fuels. Agrofuels are touted as the solution to the most pressing problems facing industrial society: dependence on foreign oil supplies, rising energy prices, and harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Agrofuels are promoted as sustainable, renewable, and capable of increasing U.S. energy security while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A second look at this agrofuels euphoria tends to reveal some consequential problems. If agrofuel production is pursued along the lines of an industrial model like we now have for fossil fuels, then what will be the impacts on the environment, farmers and food prices?
Converting all of the arable land of the United States into agrofuel production can only begin to replace what the U.S. demands in daily fossil fuel use. Given natural resource limits, industrial societies must first reduce energy consumption and create energy efficiencies. Agrofuels can still be part of the promised solution, but only if such production provides a net energy gain, benefits the environment, competes economically, and produces in reasonable quantities – all without reducing food supplies.
Questions are also raised about who truly benefits. Farmers are currently receiving higher prices, but.primary beneficiaries seem to be the large corporations: agribusiness giants like ADM and Cargill, and oil companies like BP, Chevron and Shell. They are the ones grabbing increasing market shares in bioenergy production.
Notwithstanding these extrinsic questions of agrofuel production and who wins or loses, the more intrinsic question – food versus fuel – keeps coming back. When energy crops become more profitable than food crops, how does a free market society answer this question of ultimate sustainability? Competition between food and fuel can only intensify. Whether from agrofuel production or higher fossil fuel prices, food prices will rise. Does this mean that making ethanol from food is a crime against humanity, as some advocates for food rights claim?
Agrofuel advocates counter that the next generation of ethanol production – cellulosic – will resolve these concerns. Cellulosic ethanol is derived from grasses, crop residue, trees, woody debris and other plant material, most of which do not currently compete with food crops for fertile crop land.
Before technology, an ethos
The quest for clean and renewable energy – such as solar, wind, geothermal and biogas digesters -- can include agrofuels if we face the complexities of competing demands. The most basic human need is to receive this day our daily bread; after that, we can work to repair our broken connections with one another and creation. The type of economy and technology created by us to do that is at a crossroads: the old energy must be replaced by a new energy. Therefore, we need an "ethos of sustainability" for a new energy era:
 Reclaim an understanding of the carrying capacity of our planet.
Learn again the qualities of conservation and efficiencies.
Accept limits of consumption in the name of our children and future generations.
Consider both renewability and sustainability. This kind of agricultural system will protect the integrity of ecosystems and allow time for natural resources to regenerate.
Ensure that sustainable agrofuel production means farmers and rural communities thrive.
Envision the natural balance between local food systems and sustainable energy: Just as fossil fuels made possible a global industrial economy, if only fleeting, agrofuels will make possible sustainable economies within communities everywhere around the world.
We just need to slow down and accept smaller portions of the world’s bounty. In the approachable distance, there is a crossroads of necessity and sufficiency, as long as the common good points the way.
Additional information on agrofuels and bioenergy:
BioenergyWiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioenergy
U.S. Department of Energy: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/
Earth Policy Institute: www.earth-policy.org
Worldwatch Institute: www.worldwatch.org
Thinking Faith: www.thinkingfaith.org and read "Driving the Poor to Starvation" (March 9, 2008)
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Robert T. Gronski
bob@ncrlc.com
Policy Coordinator
National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Des Moines, Iowa
515-270-2634
www.ncrlc.com
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