Biofuels Pro and Con

Ah, the biofuel controversy roils on. On the one hand, we have, via treehugger, this story refuting the claim that food production is affected:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday told off critics who have accused Brazil of reducing food production in favor of ethanol, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Instead, Lula says record oil prices and rich countries' farm subsidies are to blame for soaring world food prices.

"Biofuels are not the villain menacing food security in poor countries," Lula said at a global summit in Rome on world food security. "They can play an important role in the economic and social development of developing countries.""...

Subsidies create dependency, break down entire production systems and provoke hunger and poverty. It is high time to do away with them,'' Lula stated. "It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels—fingers tainted with oil and coal." US corn-based ethanol is an example of a harmful type of biofuel "shot up with subsidies and shielded behind tariff barriers," Lula added.

On the other hand, this story from the Guardian, about the loss of jobs from the changes to the sugar cane industry due to biofuel pressures:

Half a million jobs and 500 years of tradition are to be phased out in Brazil's booming sugar cane industry to satisfy western demands for more socially acceptable work practices in the biofuel sector.

Sugar cane cutters who have been working Brazil's land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanisation.

The Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said 80% of the 500,000 jobs would be gone within three years and admitted that moving to a tractor-based system would cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce....

There are also claims that biofuels are causing deforestation in sensitive areas such as Brazil's Amazon Basin, seen by scientists as the lungs of the world because the trees there absorb so much carbon.

UNICA says subsidies in America and Europe for farmers and biofuels may be one element of the rising price of food which has caused riots in Haiti and other countries. But Jank insists Brazil is not contributing to that development because only 1% of arable land is used for ethanol production.

There are also claims that biofuels are causing deforestation in sensitive areas such as Brazil's Amazon Basin, seen by scientists as the lungs of the world because the trees there absorb so much carbon.

UNICA says subsidies in America and Europe for farmers and biofuels may be one element of the rising price of food which has caused riots in Haiti and other countries. But Jank insists Brazil is not contributing to that development because only 1% of arable land is used for ethanol production.