Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Sifelani Tsiko
4 August 2008
opinion
Harare — WHILE there is a drive by Zimbabwe and most other African countries to develop biofuels as a response to both climate change and the rising petroleum fuel import bill, agronomists and environmentalists say this must be done cautiously so as not to threaten food security and sovereignty.
Development experts who met recently at a one-day seminar in Harare to discuss food aid and food security called on Zimbabwe and other African countries to grow more crops for food than for biofuels, given the growing threat of food riots worldwide as the poor protests against rising food prices.
"Structural adjustment policies imposed by Bretton Woods institutions removed governments from food production and this is a major cause of loss of food sovereignty," said Professor Carol Thompson, a visiting political economist from the Northern Arizona University in the United States.
"Market policies have failed the poor. Food prices are rising, they are more hungry people. The Doha Round failed recently over contentious agricultural issues because the US and the European Union failed to remove subsidies for their own farmers."
She said Zimbabwe and most other African countries were enthusiastic about biofuels programmes but warned that this flurry of initiatives would lead to food shortages and more food riots as large foreign-dominated multinationals focus more on agro-fuels production at the expense of food for the poor.
"People are beginning to compete with cars. There is a rapid rise in crop production for fuel. Large conglomerates are integrating vertically from the fields to the fuel tanks and not much to the dinner plate," she said.
"In the US, only four corporates decide what you will eat and not the US government anymore. There is a big danger that Zimbabwe and Africa might lose food sovereignty if multinationals are allowed to come in and exploit food crops for biofuels.
"Maize is a staple for people here and once it's commodified for agro-fuels production, the community identity and sustenance will be lost."
According to a 2008 World Food Programme report, there were food riots in 70 countries worldwide while 100 million more people were hungry.
The United Nations estimates that one billion people suffer from hunger and poverty, about 12 percent of all humanity.
GRAIN, a non-profit organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural bio-diversity, reports that 70 percent of developing countries are net food importers as of today.
There is a large-scale planting of agro-fuel crops, particularly jatropha, in most countries in Southern Africa as governments join in the growing movement towards alternative fuels.
Large multinationals are moving in, taking over resources used by rural communities for their own survival.
Agronomists and environmentalists who met at the seminar, organised by the Community Technology Development Trust, said local people in most parts of Southern Africa would find it harder to satisfy their food and fuel needs.
"It is the rural poor who will bear the cost of the agro-fuel boom while reaping few of the benefits," said Mr Andrew Mushita, an agronomist and director of CTDT.
"The shortage of fuel has also been a challenge within the region and this has led to Sadc countries putting large areas of land under plants which will be processed to produce fuel.
"This has greatly affected agriculture and also food security of the region."
In the region, the Democratic Republic of Congo committed 3 million hectares of land for agro-fuels production, Mozambique 3,5 million hectares, South Africa 700 000 hectares, Tanzania 400 000 hectares and Zambia 500 000 hectares, according to media reports.
Agronomists and environmentalists expressed concern that these huge tracts of land were being mostly used to produce agro-fuels by multinationals for foreign consumption by rich countries in the North.
"These industrial conglomerates see Africa as a 'Green Opec' for the world. The amount of grain required to fill the 90-litre tank of a 4X4 once with ethanol will feed one person for a year," Prof Thompson said.
"Jatropha will take good soils from food crops. Is it right to make land available for agro-fuels production in a food deficit region? There is need to tackle agro-fuels in the context of our land policies."
She said Africa should be concerned that Nigeria, Africa's third largest oil producer (and the world's 10th largest) imports 70 percent of oil for domestic consumption.
"If you don't put restrictions, you will soon be importing agro-fuels back from rich countries in the North. Local communities should be involved in land use planning and energy-use options," Prof Thompson said. "There is a real danger that Africa will produce food crops for foreign profit."
These multinationals, Mr Mushita said, using huge amounts of resources (crops, land, water) could deliver a severe blow to community and national plans to achieve self-sufficiency in food and fuel.
Government of Zimbabwe officials and other energy experts think differently and see no reason why the country should not tap opportunities that go with agro-fuels production.
"We see no reason why the new bio-diesel plant has to be the last, rather than the first. We have a first-class feedstock, jatropha, that can grow even in Matabeleland South, the nearest Zimbabwe gets to a desert.
"We have vast areas of the Lowveld now barren that could grow sugar, with irrigation available if a major national effort is made to complete dams now being built and implement plans already drawn up for more," said one commentator.
"For that matter, sugar has been grown, and can be grown, in the Zambezi Valley using water from that great river.
"So instead of oil companies and oilmen growing rich on Zimbabwe's scarce foreign currency, we can have our own farmers growing rich, so buying the stuff that we their customers make, and so making us rich.
"But in all of this we must remember that we are not going it alone. We are following in the footsteps of rapidly industrialising countries such as Brazil and India that have already worked this out. All it needs is commitment from all in Zimbabwe," he said.
Zimbabwe launched the first commercial bio-diesel processing plant in southern Africa last year in an effort to produce cleaner and renewable sources of energy.
This was in response to concerns about the impact of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas) on global warming as well as depletion of the world's petroleum reserves.
The bio-diesel processing plant, which can produce the fuel from any vegetable oil-bearing seed, has a capacity to produce between 90-100 million litres of diesel a year.
At full capacity, the plant will meet 10 percent of Zimbabwe's annual diesel requirements, which translates to foreign currency savings of US$80 million a year.
Zimbabwe, like most countries in Southern Africa, depends heavily on imported petroleum fuels to power its industrial production and transport systems.
Pro-biofuels proponents also argue that the jatropha plant is more efficient in terms of land use than other seed oil crops, grows well in arid soils and does not compete with edible crops for land use.
They say at more than 35 percent oil content, the plant yields more oil than cotton and soya which both have oil content of 18 percent, while it also has a higher average yield per hectare (eight tonnes), compared to cotton (two tonnes) and soya (three tonnes).
Moreover, they argue, as jatropha grows, it stores moisture, stabilises soils and slows down desertification.
Pro-biofuels experts also say Zimbabwe and most other Southern African countries have vast expanses of semi-arid to arid regions where jatropha could grow well and halt the advance of deserts as the dry-out effects of global warming intensify in the region.
However, environmentalists say the jatropha plant is highly invasive and there is a growing movement towards a generation of genetically engineered crops and trees that could pose risks of contamination for local crops and local bio-diversity.
They also argue that, in reality, neither plantations of biofuel crops nor the energy results from them are really offering anything to rural communities and countries growing these on a commercial scale.
They say large multinationals are only competing for Africa - "The New Green Opec" of the world - for their own power profits.
In the end, it is critical for Zimbabwe and Africa at large to weigh the pros and cons of growing crops for fuel rather than food, and whether the energy demands and production processes are ecologically sustainable and socially constructive and not destructive.
"We have to think seriously on whether to grow crops for the (fuel) tank or the stomach," said one participant at the workshop.
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