Food crisis refers to the shortage of food that occurs as a result of poor climatic conditions, environmental factors and poor distribution of food in different regions leading to famine. Previous food crises have threatened the livelihoods of many people across the world.
Some of the common effects associated with food crises include things such as hunger and famine, increased rates of malnutrition, regular protests, and high food prices.
Food crises would tend to arise from various factors, with the main ones being change in oil prices, production of biofuels, and changes in weather and climate. The world has experienced numerous food crises over the years. This paper examines the contribution of biofuels in the most recent food crisis that occurred in 2011.
The 2011 global food crisis was a serious food shortage affecting most parts of the world. The crisis, which had begun by the end of 2010 through the entire 2011, affected both developed and developing countries in the world, whereby the latter were the biggest sufferers (Brown, 2011).
In fact, biofuel was among the key factors that had contributed to the crisis, as several developed countries maximized production of renewable fuels from plants.
Biofuels are easily produced from crops and have less environmental effects compared to non-renewable sources of energy. This advantage has made biofuels a better option for many third world countries who want to save on imported oils as they focus more on minimizing the emission of greenhouse gases from non-renewable fuels.
The use of crops for fuel purposes has continued to raise serious concerns across the world over possible competition with the usual food purposes (Mueller, Anderson & Wallington, 2011). In this regard, USA and other countries from the European Union who have fully embraced the idea of biofuels would consider raising the expected targets of crop production to meet these crucial demands.
However, no matter the initiatives that had been undertaken to increase crop yields for biofuel production, there was still need for extra agricultural products to cater for the heightening demands.
The main reason for this was because the supply of these products remained limited, thus leading to higher prices for important cash crops such as soybean meal, corn, wheat, and barley, which are used in the production of biofuels. This demand would also affect food supply as farmers converted most of their lands to the production of crops intended for biofuel production (Cribb, 2010).
Biofuels were to a large extent a major contributing factor to the 2011 food crisis. The demand for the renewable fuels generated from crop residue had almost doubled since the year 2004, thus limiting the production of sufficient food for human consumption.
In fact, nothing less than a serious food crisis would be expected in a situation whereby a matching amount of the food required for human consumption is directed to biofuels. As a result of this competition, export supplies from key food producing countries in the world had become tight and would even be restricted sometimes, as huge amounts of crops were diverted to biofuels (Hossain & Green, 2011).
Things would go from bad to worse when countries that have been major exporters of food products started importing the same to meet the increasing demands in their regions.
America and countries from the EU would emerge as the winners in this situation, while the developing countries were the biggest losers. As far this situation was concerned, the developed countries had noting to lose, but everything to gain for a number of reasons.
First of all, these countries are major exporters of grains, and in that case, had substantial amounts of food produce for both human consumption and biofuel purposes. More importantly, these were developed countries who would manage to protect themselves from the effects of the crisis using restrictive trade policies, among other effective interventions (Ajanovic, 2011).
Developing countries, on the other hand, were the biggest sufferers of the situation, since most of what they consume comes from the western countries. Unlike the U.S. and the European Union, who save a lot of money in terms of oil imports from biofuels, developing countries had nothing to gain out of these practices.
Worse still, these countries appeared to be exploited further by the developed nations who continued to buy food products from other parts of the world to cater for the increasing demands in their own regions.
Various solutions have been proposed to help resolve the issue of food crisis as a result of biofuel production. For instance, major producers of grain products in the world have been advised to focus on releasing stocks of grains in the course of critical times as a way of minimizing volatility in global markets.
Countries have also been urged to loosen existing restrictions on agricultural products as a way of maximizing free flow of such products to other regions of the world. Apart from the above solutions, there are some changes that must be adopted to make the situation more sustainable.
For instance, both the U.S. and the EU should focus more on renewable energy sources that do not compete with food products. Some better options here would include crop residues, grasses, and garbage.
Even though this may be a difficult trade-off to undertake, these countries can also try to limit the rate by which the expansion of biofuels takes place in their regions. This will not only increase food productivity, but will also help to lower the prices of key agricultural products in the world, thus increasing food security at the global level.
As it is shown in this paper, biofuels have been a major driving force for the 2011 global food crisis. Even though biofuels have proved to be a better alternative for non-renewable fuels, their constant production has brought serious impacts on food prices and food supplies.
In this regard, there is a need for effective interventions to ensure that food security is maintained as the search for safe and reliable sources of energy continues.
References
Ajanovic, A. (2011). Biofuels versus food production: Does biofuels production increase food prices? Energy, 36(4), 207-211.
Brown, L. (2011). The great food crisis of 2011. Foreign Policy, 10(7), 34-38.
Cribb, J. (2010). The coming famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hossain, N., & Green, D. (2011). Living on a Spike: How is the 2011 food price crisis affecting poor people? New York: Oxfam Research Report, June 2011.
Mueller, S., Anderson, J., & Wallington, T. (2011). Impact of biofuel production and other supply and demand factors on food price increases in 2008. Biomass and Bioenergy, 35(5), 162-163.