Biofuel production and the threat to South Africa's food security
2007
A. Sugrue | R. Douthwaite
As biofuel production continues to expand rapidly all over the world, there is increasing concern about how this will affect food prices, particularly of foodcrops used to produce biofuels. This paper examines the likely effect of increased prices of maize and sugar on South African (SA) consumers, especially on the very poor, and provides a critical examination of the South African government’s industrial biofuels strategy. <br /><br />The paper argues that the SA government’s current strategy is seriously flawed and underestimates the impact that increased biofuels production will have on the poor. It predicts that this strategy will result in a highly unequal contest between the poor having to compete for the basics on which they live, and the rich who want to burn it as fuel for their cars. The paper makes four specific recommendations on how this strategy could be modified to ensure that the potential benefits of bio-energy are captured by the poor in rural areas, rather than monopolised by rich urban consumers: tax breaks and excise duty reductions should not be given for ethanol produced from maize, wheat or sorghum, or for biodiesel produced from canola or soya increased biofuel production should not involve the concentration of land ownership and land access into fewer hands the government should develop contingency plans to ensure that undue hardship is not caused to the poor if the food and fuel prices they face rise more rapidly than their incomes the biofuels strategy needs to be developed in a wider context than is currently apparent. <br /><br />
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