Dar Es Salaam — TECHNOLOGY that is currently available worldwide can only use food crops such as sugarcane and palm oil to manufacture biofuels.

A former World Bank lead economist for Africa Region, Mr Donald Mitchell, said that first generation technologies cannot use non-food crops to produce biofuels.

Mr Mitchell, however, pointed out that a new generation of technologies that will use non-food items to produce biofuels will soon enter the market.

"The good news is that rural poor populations will benefit from biofuel projects," said Mitchell, who defended biofuel production as a sustainable way of changing rural poverty.

He said that urban residents will pay more for food as biofuel production will increase demand for edible crops but dismissed claims by activists that food security will be affected.

"Rural farmers will earn more from their crops and be able to buy food from other areas which will improve food security," Mitchell argued saying that food production is often confused with food security.

An activist from Tanzania Forest Conservation Group, Ms Nike Doggart, said that with the World Bank expert's report, it's clear that companies currently undertaking jatropha and other non-food items biofuel production projects are simply unrealistic.

"Most companies say that they will grow jatropha for biofuel production but where is the technology?" Ms Doggart wondered.

She, however, differed with Mitchell by arguing that for rural Tanzanians, food security can only be assured by their own production. Close to 80 per cent of the country's population lives in rural areas where the bulk of food consumed annually comes from small holder family farms.

Food security activists consider the World Bank position dangerous as it advocates use of food crops for biofuel production.

In a report commissioned by Tanzania Natural Resource Forum's Forestry Working Group and the International Institute for Environment and Development, researchers Emmanuel Sulle and Fred Nelson determined that land grabbing, poor compensation and environmental degradation are threatening food security.

"They found that, in some villages, the proposed land allocations would represent the loss of most of the villages' land and natural assets.

For example, Utunge Village proposed to give to SEKAB BT 72 per cent of its land (19,363 ha out of a total of 26,865.5 ha)," the report titled 'Biofuels, Land Access and Rural Livelihoods in Tanzania,' said while referring to Swedish biofuel giant, Sekab AB's Rufiji project.

Many villagers were given verbal promises to give away huge tracts of arable land to multinational corporations investing in biofuel cultivation.

"In the Sun Biofuels acquisition in Kisarawe, a similar story emerged. Many promises were made to the villages regarding social service provision,

employment and other forms of benefits but, to our knowledge, these promises have never been put into a written contract based on a formal partnership between the villages and the investor," Messrs Sulle and Nelson wrote.