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| | Food, Fuel or
Forest?
Opportunities, threats and knowledge
gaps of feedstock production for bio-energy
Wageningen Seminar on Bio-energy, March 2nd, 2007
Food, Fuel or Forest?
In the coming four decades a doubling of the global food and feed production is
foreseen. This will further increase the demand for natural resources.
Government directives, incited by high oil prices, global climatic change,
finite energy resources and geo-political tensions, promote partial replacement
of fossil fuel by biofuels. This will further increase the demand for land,
water and minerals.
Any component of organic material can theoretically be converted into energy for
use in transport or as electricity. Food grade sugars starch and vegetable oil
are used as feedstock for energy production, through so called first generation
technologies. Second generation technologies must yield greater efficiencies and
allow the use of (ligno)cellulose from woody material and from current
agricultural wastes. It is expected that second generation technologies will
still take many years to develop into economically viable options.
No matter the feedstock for the production of biofuel for 1st or 2nd generation
technologies, any source will require similar resources as food production and
will put a claim on land and other resources. Presently several millions of
hectares are dedicated to biofuel production especially in Brazil and the United
States where sugar cane and corn starch are converted into alcohol for mandatory
mixture with petrol. Similar directives of the European Union increase the
demand for biofuels and consequently for land and other resources. Prices and
availability of certain commodities such as sugar, corn, palm oil and canola are
becoming affected by the demand for bioenergy.
Many implications of this additional demand for feedstock for biofuel on the
resource base, economic power structures, price development of foodstuff and
social changes are unknown. There are gaps in our knowledge regarding the
potential global capacity of feedstock production for biofuels resources such as
land, water and nutrients. There also is a need to base future efforts on facts
rather than emotion.
To this end, Wageningen UR organized a seminar, supported by the Ministry of
Agriculture, Nature and Food quality and two major global industries Unilever
and Shell with the following aims:
I. to review the most recent scientific insights in potential
global feedstock production for large scale biofuel production, the claims on
natural resources and the competition between food and fuel
II. to identify gaps in knowledge regarding sustainable
production of feed stock.
III. to inform policy and industry about current insights in
these issues
Proceedings* (in pdf; 2MB)
Food, Fuel or Forest? Proceedings of the seminar held at Wageningen, the
Netherlands. March 2, 2007
Editors: Anton Haverkort, Prem Bindraban & Harriëtte Bos
*If interested in a hard copy, please contact
anton.haverkort@wur.nl
Presentations (in pdf)
Opening address by the chair
Rudy Rabbinge WUR/Senate, Wageningen, The Hague
Drivers for bioenergy: governmental directives driven by geopolitics, greenhouse
effect and autarky
Thijs Berman,EU parliament, Brussels
Conventional and advanced technologies for the conversion of biomass into
secondary energy carriers
and/or chemicals
René van Ree, ECN, Petten
Developing global biomass potentials in a sustainable way
André Faaij, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht
Impact of an increased biomass use on agricultural prices, markets and food
security
Josef Schmidhuber,FAO, Rome
Environmental impacts of various options of biofuel for transportation
Guido Reinhardt, IFEU, Heidelberg
Land, water and nutrient requirements for biomass production.
Prem Bindraban, WUR, Wageningen
Competing claims on Natural Resources: Food, Fuel, Feed, Fibre or Forest
Ken Giller, WUR, Wageningen
Biofuels and the development of world agricultural markets
Hans van Meijl, WUR, The Hague
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