Biofuel Use Causing Poverty?

With the recent release of a study completed by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors that projects that America could conceivably generate 90 billion gallons of ethanol by 2030, the United States seems bound to ignore the warnings OXFAM has made regarding the impact biofuel is making on the world food crisis. Over the summer, OXFAM released an article entitled “Inconvenient Truth: How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change”. In the article OXFAM contends that biofuels are a leading agitator in the exponentially rising cost of food stating that, “thirty percent of price increases are attributable to biofuels,” and that 30 million new people have been dragged into poverty as a result. The study completed by Sandia contends however, that only 15 billion gallons of the biofuel will come from food stocks, citing that it is possible the other 75 billion gallons of biofuel could come from cellulosic feedstocks. The study also states that these cellulosic feedstocks will not be grown on land that is now used to grow food. This new use of land however, may offset the positive environmental effect that the biofuel use could have. In the OXFAM article it is noted that although biofuels seem to affect the fight against global climate change positively, the amount of farmland required to create a sustainable amount of ethanol would in turn infringe on forested areas, and thus increase the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The OXFAM article does state that small-scale production of ethanol in developing nations could be a positive way to bring about better social and economic conditions as evidenced in this video.