In some areas in the country, farmers who have abandoned planting coconut and cassava are now cultivating these crops again because of  increasing demand for biofuels.

Governor Rolando Yebes of Zamboanga del Norte said that farmers in his region are now going back to planting these crops because of the surging demand and the entry of companies interested in the production of biofuels.

“Before farmers cut their coconut trees and sold them for lumber. Now, they are planting coconuts for biofuels,” he told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak adding that cassava, which has shown growth in previous years, is expected to increase further due to investments from biofuel companies like Basic Energy Corp., which is reportedly eyeing an ethanol plant in the region using cassava as feedstock.

Constancio Alama, assistant regional director for agriculture of Region IX, said that despite the promise of biofuels, there is a need to ensure that local government units should prioritize the production of food over biofuels. “Bakit uunahin ang sasakyan kung may nagugutom? (Why should we prioritize vehicles when people are hungry?)”

Zamboanga del Norte is not alone. In many parts of the world, with the unprecedented rise in oil price, a tug of war is taking place over using land for fuel or food.

The passage in the Philippines of the Biofuels Act in January 2007 generated a lot of interest about this renewable source of energy. The law aims to break the Philippine’s dependence on imported fuel particularly oil. Two years after the enactment of this law, liquid fuels for vehicles and engine are required to contain at least five percent of biofuel.

Among the examples of biofuels are bioethanol and biodiesel. Bioethanol is produced by fermentation of starch or sugar from cassava, sugarcane and corn while biodiesel can be extracted from plants like coconut, palm and jathropa or tuba-tuba.

Food crisis

The Asian Development Outlook 2008 Update released last week identified soaring oil prices and laws calling for increased production of bio-fuel substitutes as among the causes of  the food crisis, along with  low interest rates, rapid economic growths of China and India, and the weakening of the dollar.

 “The combination of high oil prices and legislative mandates to raise production of biofuels substitutes for gasoline and diesel fuel established a price link between feedstocks, such as corn and vegetable oils, and fuel prices,” the report reads.

This is not the first time that biofuels has been identified as one of the threats to food security. Debates on the effect of biofuels production on food security have been ongoing but were highlighted  when food prices started to soar.

In a conference held in October last year, Jean Ziegler, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, warned countries that converting crops like corn, wheat and sugar into biofuels would result in the higher prices of food.

Ziegler called for a five-year moratorium on biofuels and described converting food crops into biofuels as “absolutely catastrophic” for poor and developing countries. He said in a statement:  “It’s a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces foodstuff that will be burned into biofuel.”

Wanted: national land use policy

Candido Cabrido Jr., dean of the University of the Philippines School of Urban and Regional Planning, said there is a need for a national land use policy that would serve as a guide to the proper allocation of the country’s land resources.

“We need it [national land use policy] because of the intensifying conflict over land use,” said Cabrido in a forum in UP last June. Cabrido added that it would guide local government units in delineating the land for food production and for alternative sources of energy. “We are both having a crisis in rice supply and alternative sources of energy,”

The lack of a national land use policy has been blamed for the conversion of many farmlands to lands for non-agricultural use. Cabrido estimates that around 4,000-5,000 hectares of farm lands are converted to non-agricultural use every year. “In Tarlac alone, sixty hectares of farmlands were converted annually during the last five years,”

Cabrido, who was among those involved in making a first draft of a land use policy in 1994, said sometimes he already felt hopeless that it would be passed. He said in forum: “We work hard for the first draft and until now they are still making drafts.”

During the 13th Congress, former Speaker Jose de Venecia authored House Bill 272, which seeks the creation of the national land use policy.  A check on the bills filed during the 14th Congress, meanwhile, showed that there are seven bills calling for the drafting of a national land use policy.

Allocating lands

One way to ensure to ensure the balance between fuel and food is by monitoring the conversion of agricultural lands and allocation of agricultural lands for food production and energy purposes.

Local government units, through the Local Government Code of 1991, are given the power to re-classify lands .They are also given the powers to draft  comprehensive land use plans (CLUPs) for their territories. The CLUP is a policy guide for the regulation of land uses in all the territorial jurisdictions of an LGU and is enforced through ordinances. It classifies the land into four policy areas: production, settlement, protection, and infrastructure.

Data from the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB), however, show that some LGUs have yet to draft their CLUPs. As of May 2008, out of the 1,610 cities and municipalities, only 1,397 have an approved CLUP and there are still 213 LGUs with ongoing planning activities.

A number of provinces still do not have a provincial physical framework plan (PPFP). The PPFP identifies the protected and preserved areas, growth and settlement areas in a province and it delineates the desired general physical development of the province by providing development plan and locations for infrastructures.

Based on the data from the HLURB, only 59 of the 81 provinces have approved PPFPs as of May 2008.

Pressure on food supplies

The 2008 World Development Report: Agriculture for Development warned that the rising price of energy—along  with growing demand for food, feeds and biofuels, increasing scarcity of land and water and the effects of climate change—is putting pressure on the global food supplies.

Another study—Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers--prepared by UN-Energy showed that expansion of liquid biofuel production might affect food security from the household to global level

“Liquid biofuel production could dampen the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other productive resources away from food crops,” the report said. “Many of the crops currently used as biofuel feedstock require high quality agriculture land and significant inputs of fertilizer, pesticides and water.”

According to a policy brief, Biofuels: The Promises and the Risks, governments should implement regulations and devise a certification system that will lessen environmental and food security risks from biofuels production. “Governments need to carefully assess economic, environmental and social benefits and the potential to enhance energy security.” (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

---

INTERACT WITH THIS ARTICLE