Hidden cost' of Colombian biofuel

Biofuel crops such as palm tree oil are threatening the lives and land of Afro-Colombian families, farmers and indigenous Colombians, say aid organisations.Columbia’s government is proud to call the country the second biggest producer of biofuels in the world.

Biofuels are any fuels made from living things including wood, biogas (methane) from animal waste and ethanol, diesel or other liquid fuels made from processing plant material or waste oil. But ordinary Colombian families are being forced to leave their land so that it can be used to grow biofuel crops.The United Nations last year stopped all investment in biofuels because it believes their production is worsening the global food crisis. According to BBC World, the UN is worried that biofuel crops are taking priority over food crops.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said biofuels were of "limited use" for solving the planet's energy needs. At the same time, they pushed up food prices by diverting valuable crops such as sugar maize and oilseed from food use to energy use.In theory, biofuels are a way of reducing greenhouse gas. But energy is used processing the crops, which can make some biofuels as polluting as petrol-based fuels.

Colombian Agriculture Minister Andres Fernandez defended biofuel production last week saying it is a government objective that the industry “continues to grow". He said developing the industry is no longer just government policy but State policy.Answering concerns that biofuel crops occupy land that could be used to produce food, Fernandez said that food and biofuel crops do not "compete" for land in Colombia."I think that that is just a fallacy disseminated by people who don't believe in biofuels," he said.Fernandez said that the development of the biofuel industry has had a "wonderful" effect on the lives of farmers, who now have work "where before there were no crops, nor food, nothing."
But wonderful is not the way many rural workers in the Choco province, in northwest Colombia see the effect of biofuels.

One worker, Eustaquio Polo Rivera, told BBC World that he lost his land in 1996. "We used to produce what we needed for ourselves: bananas, corn, rice. But one day, soldiers just arrived and took our land. They destroyed everything in the community," he says."They told me they needed the land to fight the guerrillas, but we soon realized that the point was to take our land."We tried to resist, but the armed men warned us they would take no responsibility for the families who decided to stay." More than 500 people fled, he said."When we tried to go back, our land was planted with palm trees.”

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children