Food Crisis: Biofuels and Animal Feed are Under Indictment

Agricultural production destined for the production of biofuels and feed for slaughter animals, again ends up in the dock in conjunction with the Russian-Ukraine crisis .

The situation we are experiencing at the moment, with millions of tons of cereals stopped in Ukrainian ports due to the naval blockade imposed by Moscow, only exacerbates the food problem of the whole world and, especially, of those countries that depended heavily on these imports.

Russia is not only waging a war against the Ukrainian people, it is starving the poorest countries, especially some African and Middle Eastern ones, by preventing free movement of the ships carrying these foodstuffs.

If we consider that Ukraine, before the Soviet invasion, exported about 5 million tons of cereals per month, during the hostilities it is exporting no more than 1 million tons.

WFP (World Food Program) has estimated that the population on the verge of hunger has doubled over the past 5 years (from 108 to 193 million people) due to the pandemic, the increase in energy, the repeated droughts that have hit India which is the second largest producer of wheat in the world after Russia, the floods in China and the decrease in crops in the USA and Europe, due to of reduced rainfall.

War is not fought only with bombs but also with weapons such as food, in fact Moscow is banning crops in Ukraine to lose the possibility of self-financing with agricultural products, reducing even the Ukrainian people to hunger and being able to conquer those markets that were the responsibility of the Kiev.

It also seems to be raiding the crops contained within the Ukrainian Silos to make the black market for cereals flourish, given the exorbitant prices on the market.

In general, despite this policy of control of the agricultural market by the Russians, Moscow's production alone will not be enough to replace that lost by Ukraine. Russia is heavily dependent on Europe for seeds and pesticides, with a total expenditure exceeding one billion euros, products that will probably be lacking next season.

If on the one hand, the Western coalition is evaluating how to restore the circulation of these precious ships to ward off new famines and social unrest, on the other hand it is evaluating how to increase agricultural production in Europe.

There are a few factors to take into consideration regarding:

• Agricultural activation on still uncultivated land

• The assessment of the need to replace biofuel crops with food crops

• The possibility of reducing the production of feed for slaughter animals

• The fight against food waste

Uncultivated agricultural lands are numerous and widespread in many European countries, as up to now there has not been the need and convenience to cultivate them, this a due to competition on the prices of finished products that were largely imported from the conflict zones and from Southeast Asia.

Today, in the absence of a satisfactory quota of cereals, every nation has to worry about obtaining as much as possible from its agricultural lands, encouraging companies to take care of land up to now left uncultivated.

There is no doubt that the cultivation of products for biofuels was a very thorny topic long before this food crisis triggered by the war and the pandemic.

The reasons were related to the consumption of forests and water that these activities imply, in the face of a market that is increasingly looking for alternative fuels for worldwide mobility and for the production of electricity.

The war, meanwhile, has created two problems of great social impact:

• The explosion of the price of gas and oil

• The lack of cereals and its derivatives

Therefore, to the previous doubts about the opportunity to allocate agricultural resources to preparatory crops for the production of biofuels, the discussion between those asking for an extension or, at least, a maintenance of the cultivated areas to cope with the expensive energy and those who want to reduce them in favor of agricultural production for food purposes.

Those who push to reduce the cultivation of biofuels argue that the land occupied for food crops is already scarce in itself to meet the demand for world food, with a constantly growing population and decreasing agricultural production for food, due to climate change, migration and widespread war situations.

Furthermore, they argue that the increase in demand for biofuels leads to greater deforestation in search of new land to cultivate and an increase in the use of water, already lacking globally.

This situation, according to those who are against the production of biofuels, would lead to an increase in emissions into the atmosphere due to the decrease in green lungs.

Currently, around 80% of the EU biofuel market is made up of biodiesel, which is mainly produced from vegetable oils, and 20% from bioethanol.

Imports of palm oil are mainly intended for transport in Europe, but this product has been identified by the EU as a crop that favors deforestation.

At the end of 2018 the EU adopted an updated Renewable Energy Directive ("REDII"), this imposes limitations for those products that derive from crops that affect deforestation.

In the context of REDII, the EU has made a historic decision to phase out support for biofuels with a high risk of deforestation by 2030.

Those who instead support the validity of biofuel production, appeal to the latest report dated 2022 of the United Nations world food program, which identifies the causes of food shortages in factors other than that of biofuel cultivation.

The supporters of this activity believe that the increased demand for food can only be resolved by increasing agricultural production on currently uncultivated land.

As regards the production of feed for slaughter, we have extensively debated the issues related to the constant damage that a meat diet, at current levels, it brings to the environment, in terms of methane emissions, water consumption, deforestation, human health problems.

Obviously, in this moment in which there is a lack of fundamental cereals on the market, the sword defense of the meat production sector by the lobbies sounds a bit anachronistic livestock breeders and the slaughtering chain.

The last sore point certainly concerns food waste, not only in the cereals sector, but throughout the agricultural-food chain in which tons and tons of finished product, due to inefficiencies related to logistics, packaging and distribution.

Today, where everything is needed to feed people, every little adjustment in the chain can lead to a sum of savings that can make a difference.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.