CONTENTS

Chapter – 1 Industrial Biofuel : A false solution for addressing climate change
Chapter 2 Food for People vs Fuel for Cars : Biofuels a threat to Food Security
Chapter 3 Jatropha and Land Grab
Chapter 4 Case Studies of Jatropha Plantations
Chapter 5 Towards Sustainable, Biodiverse, Decentralised Bioenergy alternatives for India
Conclusion
Recommendations

Executive Summary

The Biofuel Hoax

Biofuels have been proposed as a major “solution” to address the climate crisis and the problem of “peak oil”. By substituting fossil fuels, they are supposed to reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which are leading to global warming.

Instead, Industrial biofuels are being promoted as a source of renewable energy and as a means towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are two ecological reasons why converting crops like Soya, corn and palm oil into liquid fuels can actually aggravate climate chaos and the CO2 burden.

Firstly, deforestation caused by expanding Soya plantations and palm oil plantations is leading to increased CO2 emissions. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.6 billion tons or 25 to 30 per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year comes from deforestation. By 2022, biofuel plantations could destroy 98% of Indonesia’s rainforests.

According to Wetlands International, destruction of Forest lands in South East Asia for palm oil plantations is contributing to 8% of the global CO2 emissions. According to Delft Hydraulics, every tonne of palm oil results in 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions or 10 times as much as petroleum products. However, this additional burden on the atmosphere is treated as a clean development mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions. Biofuels are thus contributing to the same global warming which they are supposed to reduce. (World Rainforest Bulletin No.112, Nov 2006, Page 22). Further, the conversion of biomass to liquid fuel uses more fossil fuels than it substitutes.

David Pimental and Ted Patzek have shown that all crops have a negative energy balance when converted to biofuels i.e. it takes more fossil fuel energy input to produce the equivalent energy in biofuel. Thus, for each unit of energy spent in fossil fuel, the output is 0.778 unit of energy in maize ethanol, 0.688 unit in switch grass ethanol, 0.534 in soya bean diesel. (D Pimental and T.W. Potzeh “Ethanol production using corn, switch grass and wood: biodiesel production using soybean and sunflower”. Natural Resources Research, 2005, 14, 65-76)

One gallon of ethanol production requires 28,000 kcal. This provides 19,400 kcal of energy. Thus the energy efficiency is - 43%.

Unites States will use 20% of its corn to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol which will substitute 1% of oil use. If 100% of corn was used, only 7% of the total oil would be substituted. This is clearly not a solution either for peak oil or climate chaos.

Seeds of Hunger

The spread of industrial biofuels is thus not solving the problem of climate change. It is instead creating landlessness.The diversion of food crops to fuel has led to increase in food prices.

Fidel Castro in an article titled “Food stuff as Imperial weapon: Biofuels and Global Hunger” has said:

More than three billion people are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.

The biofuel sector worldwide has grown rapidly. United states and Brazil have established ethanol industries and the European Union is also fast catching up to explore the potential market. Governments all over the world are encouraging biofuel production with favourable policies. United states is pushing the other third world nations of the world to go in for biofuel production so that their energy needs get met at the expense of plundering others resources.

In India there are plans to use Sorghum and sugarcane for Ethanol. India is the largest prouder of sugar in the world. The sugar industry has deliberately created a crisis by not paying sugar cane farmers. The crisis is being used to propose that the use of sugar cane for Ethanol would help the farmers. Sorghum, a nutritious rainfed cereal is also being developed into ethanol. India is the second largest producer of Sorghum in the World. The World bank supported International Crops Research Institute for the semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), under the CGIAR has played the lead role in breeding of sorghum for Ethanol and its promotion.

With effect from January 1^st 2003, India has allowed 5% blending of Ethanol with petrol and wanted to increase it by 10%.

Land Grab through Jatropha

Industrial biofuels are also leading to a massive land grab as shown by the case studies of Jatropha plantations in India carried out by Navdanya. Both agicultural lands and village commons are being appropriated, undermining Food Security and Ecological Security.

In Chhattisgarh, agricultural crops of tribals have been destroyed to plant Jatropha. The tribals were denied their inherent right to decide upon what to do with their commons and it’s a violation of the legal recognition of collective rights under the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA). The study also shows details of the villages in Chhattisgarh which have faced land conflicts because the people have opposed the cultivation of Jatropha plantations.

In Vidarbha, Maharashtra, corporates have taken advantage of the failed cotton crops of the farmers and have lured them into cultivating Jatropha. The corporates have been successful in inducing the farmers into Jatropha on the false promise that the plantations will give immense returns after three years. The Government is also providing subsidies to the farmers who plant Jatropha. A farmer has committed suicide in Vidarbha because of the Government’s inability to provide him with the promised subsidy.

Rajasthan has passed a new law to transfer village common lands to corporations for Jatropha plantations. The destruction of the livelihoods of pastoralists and livestock herders such as Gujjars have already led to major riots in Rajasthan. The transfer of commons and grazing lands from providing fodder to livestock in the local economy to providing fuel for automobiles of the rich will further erode rural livelihoods and increase social tensions.

Diversion of biodiversity and biomass from the rural poor to industry will exacerbate poverty and undermine sustainability.

The poor live in a biomass / biodiversity based economy. Diversion of land to industrial biofuels will also divert biodiversity / organic matter from basic needs of the poor and maintenance of ecological cycles. It will create total destitution and collapse of rural agro-ecosystems as biodiversity and water are diverted by industry for biofuel.

Where ever Jatropha is cultivated on cropland or common lands, food security is undermined. When agricultural lands are diverted from food crops to biodiesel crops, there is scarcity of food. When common lands are diverted to Jatropha from fodder, there is less food for animals and the livestock economy is undermined. Less animals means less dairy products which directly affects the nutritional security of the people especially the children. Less animals also means less organic manure which undermines food security by robbing soils of vital organic matter needed for renewal of soil fertility

Chapter 1

Industrial Biofuel : A False Solution for Addressing Climate Change

Ecological, Diverse, Decentralised Biofuels vs Industrial Biofuels

Biofuels, i.e fuels from biomass, continue to be the most important energy source for the poor in the world. The ecological biodiverse farm is not just a source of food, it is also a source of energy. Energy for cooking the food comes from the inedible biomass like stalks of millets and pulses, agro-forestry species and village wood lots. Managed sustainably, village commons has been a source of decentralized energy for centuries. Decentralised energy from biomass is a vital part of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. Biomass can be used directly as cooking and heating fuel. It can be turned into biogas, a decentralized energy alternative Gandhi promoted. Biofuels can be used to generate electricity for decentralized use, and can be part of a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear to lighting the last hut of the poor. If embedded in a democratic, decentralized framework of management and decision making and ownership and control over natural resources, decentralized biofuels can rejuvenate biodiversity, recycle carbon enhance agricultural productivity, increase the resilience of agro ecosystems to climate change and increase the food and energy security for the poor.

However, the current euphoria over industrial biodufels is promoting monocultures and destroying biodiversity, promoting continued luxury consumption of the rich to drive cars at the cost of basic needs of the poor to food and domestic energy, promoting centralized corporate ownership and control over land and biomass by grabbing it from the poor.

In 1995 there were 34 countries where wood fuels provided more than 70% of energy needs and in 13 countries wood fuel provided 90% or more energy.

Region	Woodfuels mm³ equivalent			Share total energy (%)
Region	Fuelwood	Charcoal	Black liquor	Share total energy (%)
Africa	445	131	34	15
Asia (developing)	859	72	3	35
Oceania (developing)	6	0	0	52
Latin America and Caribbean	223	34	19	12
Europe, Israel, Turkey	56	2	51	3
Former USSR	32	0	8	1
Canada and United States	96	4	146	3
Australia, New Zealand, Japan	3	0	23	1
World Total	1700	143	284	7

Table: Woodfuel consumption and share of total energy use (1995)

	1994			2010
	Area	Mass	Energy	Area	Mass	Energy
	1000 ha	kt	PJ	1000 ha	kt	PJ
Total woodfuel consumption		645,895	9,688		811,548	12,173
Potential woodfuel supply
Forest land	416,204	669,812	10,047	370,363	629,339	9,440
Agricultural areas	876,933	601,407	9,021	971,062	692,088	10,381
Other wooded lands	93,140	53,994	810	81,368	47,170	708
Deforestation waste	(4,253)	605,565	9,083	(3,114)	437,710	6,566
Total woodfuel potentially available	1,382,024	1,930,778	28,962	1,419,679	1,806,307	27,095
50% of crop process residues	876,933	218,915	3,458	971,062	322,024	5,105
Total potentially available		2,149,693	32,420		2,128,331	32,200

Table: Consumption and potential supply of biomass fuels in 16 Asian countries

The diverse crop and tree species that have supplied rural energy in biodiverse agro ecosystems do not appear in the new lexicon of “biofuels”. Biofuels are not anymore an agrarian product for needs of the rural poor. Infact they are not even a complementary product to food, instead they are in competition with food. They are not part of the diversified and decentralized, sustainable and equitable food and energy system.

Industrial biofuels are not the fuels for the poor; they are the foods of the poor, transformed into heat, electricity, and transport of the rich. Liquid biofuels, in particular ethanol and bio-diesel, are one of the fastest growing sectors of production, driven by the search of alternatives to fossil fuels both to avoid the catastrophe of peak oil and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The promotion of industrial biofuels is based on legislation and policy. Laws are being enacted to promote and subsidise liquid fuels by diverting land from food to industrial plantations. From the richest countries in the North to the poorest countries in the South, food security is being forgotten in order to keep the energy infrastructure of the fossil fuel age “well oiled”, literally. The entire edifice of mobility built on oil from fossil fuels – diesel and petrol is being sought to be upheld and expanded on the basis of oil from plants – soya, corn, palmoil, jatropha etc. President Bush is trying to pass legislation to require the use of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017. M. Alexander of the Sustainable Development Department of FAO has stated: “The gradual move away from oil has begun and over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 per cent of the world’s energy needs.”

Global production of biofuels alone has doubled in the last five years and is likely to double again in the next four years. Among countries that have enacted a new pro-biofuel policy in recent years are Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Columbia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia.

Paul Wolfowitz, former World Bank President once said “Biofuels are an opportunity to add to the world supply of energy to meet the enormous growing demand and hopefully to mitigate some of the price effect. It’s an opportunity to do so in an environmentally friendly way and in a way that is carbon neutral. It is an opportunity to do so in a way that developing countries like Brazil can provide income and employment for their people.”

Are industrial biofuels carbon neutral? And are the poor gaining or loosing with the explosive production of industrial biofuels? What are the soil and ecological implication of the new policy obsession with industrial biofuels? What are the implications for land sovereignty and food sovereignty of the poor.

Industrial biofuels: Green or Pseudo Green

Industrial biofuels are being promoted as a source of renewable energy and as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are two ecological reasons why converting crops like Soya, corn and palm oil into liquid fuels can actually aggravate climate chaos and the CO2 burden and worsen the climate crisis while also contributing to biodiversity erosion and to depletion of water resources.

According to Wetlands International, destruction of South East Asia forest lands for palm oil plantations is contributing to 8% of the global CO2 emissions. According to Delft Hydraulics, every tonne of palm oil results in 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions or 10 times as much as petroleum producers. However, this additional burden on the atmosphere is treated as a Clean Development Mechanism(CDM) in the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions. Biofuels are thus contributing to the same global warming that they are supposed to reduce. (World Rainforest Bulletin No.112, Nov 2006, Page 22)

Further, the conversion of biomass to liquid fuel is highly energy intensive and uses more fossil fuels than it substitutes.

The energy balance of different crops is given in the table below

Crop	Yield (t/ha)	Energy Input (GJ)	Biomass Energy (GJ)	Output/ Input
Maize	8.655	33.978	130.459	3.84
Switch grass	10.000	11.535	167.480	14.52
Soybean	2.668	15.685	40.216	2.56
Sunflower	1.500	25.620	19.470	0.76
Oilseed Rape	4.080^a	12.159	54.346	4.47
	8.080^b	12.417	114.346	9.21
Wheat	8.960^a	12.562	74.189	5.91
	15.460^b	13.328	171.689	12.88

a grain; b grain and straw Source: Which Energy, 2006 Institute of Science in Society Energy Report

David Pimental and Ted Patzek have shown that all crops have a negative energy balance when converted to biofuels, i.e. it takes more fossil fuel energy input to produce the equivalent energy in biofuel. Thus for each unit of energy spent in fossil fuel, the return is 0.778 unit of energy in maize ethanol, 0.688 unit in switch grass ethanol, 0.534 in Soya bean diesel. (D Pimental and T.W. Potzeh “Ethanol production using corn, switch grass and wood: biodiesel production using soybean and sunflower. Natural Resources Research, 2005, 14, 65-76)

One gallon of ethanol production requires 28,000 kcal. This provides 19,400 kcal of energy. Thus the energy efficiency is 43%.

The U.S. will use 20% of its corn to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol which will substitute 1% of oil use. If 100% of corn was used, only 7% of the total oil would be substituted. This is clearly not a solution either to peak oil or climate chaos. (David Pimental at IFG conference on “The Triple Crisis”, London, Feb 23-25, 2007)

And it is a source of other crisis. 1700 gallons of water are used to produce a gallon of ethanol. Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer, more insecticides, more herbicides than any other crop.

Ethanol constitutes 99 per cent of all biofuels in the USA. In 2004 3.4 billion gallons of ethanol were produced in 2004 and blended into gasoline, amounting to about 2 per cent of gasoline and 1.3 per cent of energy. The government has introduced a $0.51 tax credit per gallon of ethanol and mandated a doubling of ethanol (7.5 billion gallons) to be used in gasoline by 2012 in the Energy Policy Act (2008)

Pimental and Patzek have shown that the cost of corn feedstock is $0.28/litre, which is 50% of the cost. Ethanol is getting $ 0.79/litre of subsidies which brings the subsidy bill to $ 3billion. Corn ethanol costs $1.88/litre. Since it has only 66 per cent energy per litre compared to oil, its real cost is $ 1.88/litre compared to $ 0.33/litre for gasoline. The total cost to the consumer of subsidizing corn ethanol is $ 8.4 billion/year.

According to Patzek “the United States has already wasted a lot of time, money and natural resources pursuing a mirage of an energy scheme that cannot possibly replace fossil fuels. The only real solution is to limit the rate of use of these fossil fuels. Everything else will lead to an eventual national disaster”. (p24 “which Energy, ISIS, 2006)

99% of all biofuel consumption in US is based on corn and soya. Its production is expected to exceed the 2012 targets of 7.5 billion gallons per year. (D. Pimental 2003, Ethanol fuels: Energy balance, economics and environmental impacts are negative, Nuclear Resources Research, 12: 127-134)

Even if all the US corn and Soya were converted to fuel, it would only substitute 12% of the petrol and 6% of the diesel. If the entire oil had to be substituted, it would need 1.4 million square miles of corn for ethanol or 8.8 million square miles for Soya for biodiesel. (H. Altieri and Elizabeth Bravo, The ecological and social tragedy of crop based biofuel production in the Americas)

The E.U. requirement to have 5% biofuel in oil by 2010 will require 69% more land to be cropped in Italy than is available, 102% additional water and 40% more chemicals. (Sergio Ulgiate at IFG conference on Triple Crisis)

In the U.K., 2.5% of the fuel will have to be biofuels by 2008, rising to 5% by 2010. By 2050, 33% of the biodiesel is supposed to come from crops. This is a recipe for disaster. It is a case of the cure being worse than the disease. The planet and the poor are loosing – the rainforests – the lungs, the heart, the liver of the planet – are being bulldozed to plant Soya and palm oil. The poor are loosing because land and water that would have produced food for the hungry is being used to run cars.

Automobile companies and agribusiness are the ones who gain from the use of liquid biofuels to run cars. Biofuels allow car manufacturers to keep selling cars inspite of peak oil and climate change. And they don’t allow them to do anything about fuel efficiency. As George Monbiot reports, ‘In February (2007) the European Commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It has intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission fro

Chapter – 1

The Biofuel Hoax

Seeds of Hunger

Land Grab through Jatropha

Ecological, Diverse, Decentralised Biofuels vs Industrial Biofuels