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Gambia: Bio Fuel Production Impacts On Trade And Agriculture
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FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Saikou Ceesay
The global adoption of bio fuel as an "Energy security strategy" is fast becoming the main factor affecting agricultural production and international trade, said Buba Khan, the Food Rights manager at Action Aid, The Gambia.
Mr. Khan made this statement during an interview with this reporter on the impact of Bio Fuel and ethanol on food supply to third world countries. The mandatory targets to increase the use of bio fuel in developed countries will have a progressive impact on the global South, especially in agricultural areas, added Mr. Khan. In his view, the global adoption of bio fuel as an "energy security strategy" is fast becoming the main factor affecting agricultural production and international trade.
Mr. Khan added that the growing demand for bio fuel production is squeezing the agricultural market, introducing new bio-energy corporate actors and channeling heavy flows of investment into current and future agricultural lands.
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Going further, he said that the expansions of massive monocultures lead to the destruction of our forests, savannahs and wildlife, and that it raises land and food prices and directly impacts on rural communities who are forced off their land to make way for the plantations.
He said that rapid expansion of soy and sugar cane plantation will push out other farming methods, causing deforestation, loss of wildlife and huge social problems, including violent conflicts and forced land evictions.
"Whilst we feed cars and factories with cheap crops from the South, food prices rocket, forests are destroyed and people suffer" concluded Mr. Khan.
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