# 2

"Biofuels aren't the villain that threatens food security," he said at the start of a Latin American meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization. "On the contrary ... they can pull countries out of energy dependency without affecting foods."

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula in AP

# 3

Why are food prices increasing?

Food prices have soared because agricultural production has not kept up with the rising demand of cereals for food consumption, cattle feeding and biofuel production. For the first time in decades, worldwide scarcity of food is becoming a problem. Global cereal stocks are falling rapidly. Some predict that US wheat stocks will reach a 60-year low in 2008. Population growth in poor countries is boosting the grain demand for food consumption.

By Katarina Wahlberg. Read here

Any solution??

# 1

From the policy-maker’s point of view, second-generation biofuels offer a number of advantages:

• They allow the use of a much wider range of raw material, especially waste. This can significantly lower the cost of the feedstock.

• The resulting fuels are high-quality and clean-burning, with potentially a much lower well-to-wheels CO₂ profile than other liquid fuel options.

• The cultivation process (if any) could be less environmentally intensive than for ordinary agricultural crops. Lower intensity of cultivation will result in even lower greenhouse gas emissions from cultivation.

• They can be co-produced with electricity.

  Read it here