Lately, all over the world, we have witnessed an out-and-out offensive of big business and international capital and financiers to promote what they chose to call “biofuels”, referring to agrofuels. As we have pointed out at the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which took place in Mali (March 2007), the prefix bio (referring to life) is being used in a clearly manipulative sense. The correct thing to say is agrofuels as we are talking about fuel produced from agricultural products.

This unusual interest in agrofuels has fundamental reasons. Oil reserves are coming to an end, and their price tends to rise more and more – it already exceeds 120 dollars per barrel. Thus, individual transport is becoming unviable, which reduces the profit margins of oil and auto companies. Second, we are facing a clamor of humanity as scientists denounce that our planet is dangerously heating up, and that a rise in global temperature of between 2 to 4 degrees is going to change the whole climate system, rain patterns and agricultural production, seriously affecting people’s health and endangering many species, including the survival of humankind.

In the face of these facts, and with the clear objective of maintaining their profit levels, an unholy alliance emerged between three sectors of international capital: automotive companies, oil companies and multinationals of the agriculture sector. And this is where the proposal came up to rapidly expand the production of agrofuels as a substitute for oil, without affecting the system of individual transport, ensuring ongoing profits.

However, alcohol (ethanol) and vegetable oils are essentially the result of solar energy condensed by photosynthesis that undergoes a chemical mutation, which gives it sufficient energy so that later in combustion, it can move engines. Therefore, the basic need to produce agrofuels on a large scale depends on the abundant existence of three factors: land, water and sun.

So these capital enterprises immediately turned to the southern hemisphere, specially to tropical countries with abundant land, to persuade them to produce ethanol and oilseeds to export to developed countries of the northern hemisphere. This is how the proposal was presented to the southern countries to quickly produce these agrofuels, be they cane, African palm, soy or sunflower, based on a capitalist model of production. That is, in large developments that can use wide-scale monocultures, with mechanization techniques and intensive use of toxic agrochemicals, regardless of the consequences for the workers or the environment.

During the past few months, the Bush and Lula governments have visited the entire world, but especially southern countries, spreading propaganda on the need to produce agrofuels to export to the United States and to Europe, as if that were the solution to the poverty of farmers and the people of the southern hemisphere.

On the other hand, several imperialist corporations linked to this alliance, such as Cargill, Monsanto, Bunge and other groups of speculative investors, among them George Soros, have migrated to various southern countries. Their goal is to buy land, factories, etc. and to start the building of pipelines for alcohol, to be able to control this production market and the export of these agrofuels to the north.

Impacts on Agriculture in the South

Confronted with the opportunity to make a lot of money offered by purchasers of the north, capitalist farmers have started to buy land and to expand monocultures of cane, soy, sunflower, African palm, etc. This implies an enormous concentration of land property controlled by large landowners and by companies and, in some cases, such as Brazil, including the de-nationalization of land property bought up by foreign capital.

Another consequence of these dynamics is that in many countries, this expansion of land cultivated for agrofuels has substituted those areas dedicated to food production and dairy livestock.

Likewise, by increasing the profit margins for ethanol production, at the same time the profits on all agricultural products are increasing. This means that food prices are also rising, products that the poor population needs to buy, aggravating the “food crisis” which has attracted national and international attention in recent weeks. According to a study by the FAO, in 2007, global food prices have risen by 37%, exceeding by far the 14% registered in 2006. The main reasons are the demand and the costs of supply for agrofuels.

Similarly, land prices are rising, too, which makes investments unfeasible for small-scale farmers or induces them to sell their land at a “good price” to neighboring landowners.

Additionally, in terms of the environment, this production mode of monocultures, based on toxic agrochemicals, is going to heavily affect the environment, destroying the existing biodiversity, affecting rain patterns and ultimately contributing to climate warming. Because any monoculture, by destroying biodiversity, contributes to global warming and destabilization.

Moreover, in the case of intensive use of non-degradable poisonous agrochemicals, these are going to destroy the land’s microorganisms, contaminate the phreatic water tables, and finally they are going to remain in the end produce. In the specific case of Brazil, the companies manufacturing agrochemicals celebrate the expansion of agrofuels and foresee a doubling in the consumption of toxics over the coming three years. Which is going to make this country the world leader in consumption of toxic agrochemicals by the year 2010.

This is why agrofuel production on big capitalist estates using monocultures will cause the producing countries major environmental problems.

Alternatives

There is a variety and diversity of alternatives to face the problem of oil substitution and global warming. In the first place, we have to rethink the transport system in cities and substitute individual with collective transport. Then, the mere functioning of engines already causes warming and alters the situation of cities, independently of the kind of fuel that is used. There are possibilities to diminish the energy use by more than 30% just by educational measures.

We might also find other sources of renewable energy, from nature, such as wind, waves or solar energy. And also with a better use of gas generated by the fermenting of animal dung, which up to now is completely wasted. Similarly, with the production of butane, which is another, more efficient system elaborated with sugars and with a better use of vegetable oils. However, all these alternatives are not being discussed because obviously, they do not guarantee profits to the big companies.

- João Pedro Stedile is a leader of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina in Brazil. Article originally published in Spanish in: América Latina en Movimiento, No. 433, "Trasfondos de la crisis alimentaria", June 2008.