The High Price of Progress

In Mexico, where over 50% of the nation’s families live just at or below the poverty line, sharply rising tortilla prices have sparked protests. Tortillas provide nearly half of the daily nutrition for the poor and a rise in their cost means many will go without the little bit of food they subsist on. Tortilla producers are blaming the hike on the inflated price of corn, as investors are diverting their dollars to crops used for biofuel instead.

In Senegal, the price of bread is beginning to make the dietary staple unattainable for the nation’s poorest. Protesters took to the streets recently, where they called for a government intervention. As a country that imports over 60% of its food, Senegal has little control over inflating food prices and the global supply of grain is being stretched thin by high demands for the dwindling food crop elsewhere.

Throughout Africa, Asia and South America, people are being driven from their land. Plots previously home to lush forests—and families—are being cleared to make room for the planting of crops needed to power the booming biofuel industry, with little regard for the land’s human inhabitants.

Houston, it seems we have a problem.

Once hailed as the magic bullet in the war against climate change, biofuels are now at the center of a major backlash. The use of crops for industrial purposes (like making biofuel) has risen by a quarter since 2000. Now, it’s true that producing fuel from plant crops, like corn and grain, is environmentally cleaner than drilling for oil. Biofuels also typically burn cleaner and are made from a renewable resource. But the growing demand for cleaner energy sources means that lands have to be set aside for growing this new generation of crops. And that land, and the resources needed to sustain it, don’t just materialize out of thin air.

The European Union wants biofuels to provide 10% of all fuels by the year 2020. A lofty goal and one cheered by those who see our dependence on limited oil resources as a type of cancer plaguing the globe. But growing numbers of world food supply experts and humanitarian groups are crying foul, citing statistics like the ones above that seem to indicate the very dark side of biofuels many are unaware (or don’t wish to be aware) of. So, the question is: Could one of our plans to save the planet be harming the people that live on it? And, even more troubling: What do we do now?