Crops, Cars and Climate Crisis
Across the global South, farmers and community organizers are using the word “agrofuels” to describe the industrial production of crops for fuel. Some say that we are confronted with a choice between feeding cars or people. But for people in the global South, the debate is also about human rights violations, forced displacement, land ownership, the impacts of industrial agriculture, climate change, the increasing divide between urban and rural populations, and over-consumption.
Last May, Inter Pares, along with a coalition of social justice, international solidarity and farmers’ organizations, carried out a six-city tour across Canada to raise public awareness on agrofuels. Despite the touted benefits of agrofuels as a “green solution,” the use of food to feed cars and machinery rather than human beings is increasingly being questioned. Under the theme “Crops, Cars and Climate Crisis,” public debates were organized with local groups and with the participation of farmers, researchers, and activists from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America.
Marilyn Machado, an Afro-Colombian woman, explained that increased demand for palm oil is leading companies to violently force people off their land to convert it to palm oil plantations. Communities are denied the right to decide what they want to grow on their land, while large-scale palm oil monocultures compete with the production of food for local consumption and reduce biodiversity. Marilyn said that she felt her government was more worried about economic policies that would benefit foreign companies and respond to Northern energy demands than about the well-being of its own population.
Moreover, corporate manipulation and control of markets, combined with financial speculation in food reserves, are invisible but crucial elements of the global food system. In the words of Alberto Gómez, a peasant leader from Mexico who also participated in the agrofuels tour, "We cannot let transnational corporations decide what food will get produced and how it will get distributed, where and to whom."
Similar concerns were expressed by Ousmane Samaké from Mali, who detailed the expansion of jatropha crops for agrofuels in his country. For Ousmane, the large-scale and water-intensive jatropha monocultures erode biodiversity and reduce access to water. Moreover, jatropha tends to be cultivated on lands that are essential for grazing and where women collect firewood, thereby exacerbating conflicts between communities over scarce resources.
Through their participation in these debates, Canadian audiences from Charlottetown to Saskatoon realized that agrofuels are not simply a matter for scientists, experts and farmers. They are a concern to all of us. The debate on agrofuels cannot be reduced to land availability or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – especially considering that, on a global scale, agrofuels will worsen greenhouse gas emissions because of deforestation due to agrofuel crop plantations.
As the tour crossed Canada, Bill C-33 was being debated and was subsequently adopted by Parliament, requiring that all gasoline include 5% ethanol content by 2010, paving the way for a $2.2 billion subsidy for agrofuels. Participants in the agrofuels debates across the country demanded to know why public funding is being used to promote a so-called solution that is increasingly being called into question.
In addition to six public fora, Inter Pares also helped convene a high-level policy dialogue among agrofuels industry lobbyists, our international guests, and government representatives. Some industry representatives attempted to disconnect the push for agrofuels in Canada from the impact its production has on people around the world. But, as one of the participants said, "Canada is completely linked to the global context. If people in the South are coming under such extreme pressure to use their land to produce crops that cannot even feed them, then we have got to start looking at what our role is in creating such a global rush."
The high-level policy dialogue was made possible with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
You can view the Crops, Cars, and Climate Crisis Ottawa Public Forum by clicking here.
| Reviewed November 3, 2008 |  |
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