BBC radio on land struggle in Paraguay due to GM soy expansion
BBC World Service - The Price of Bio Fuels
Once, bio-fuels were seen as the answer to global warming and dwindling oil stocks. Today, many who took that line, believe instead that they increase pollution and are behind worldwide environmental havoc, rising food prices, and worsening hunger and poverty.
The first official hint of changing attitudes came in the Gallagher
Review of 2007, which expressed concerns that bio fuels - renewable
liquid fuels derived from plant or animal material – not only didn’t
help climate control, but were making poor people in the developing
world even poorer.
Once, bio fuels were seen as the answer to global warming and dwindling
oil stocks. Today, many who took that view, believe instead that they
increase pollution - and are behind worldwide environmental havoc,
rising food prices, and worsening hunger and poverty.
Then, bodies as diverse as the World Bank and major charities defined
bio fuels as "a crime against humanity" and "a silent tsunami". And then
some alarming facts emerged – for example, that the grain required to
fill the tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one
person for a year, and that American land turned over to bio fuel
production every two years alone would fill 250 million mouths.
But that is not the whole story. Governments and multi-nationals fight
what they see as a simplistic black-and-white approach, insisting that
bio fuels remain our best hope for the future - despite some damaging
side-effects. Scientists, meanwhile, working on ‘a second generation’ of
bio fuels which, they believe, could eradicate those side-effects.
For this documentary, investigative reporter Gerry Northam finds out
exactly how much bio fuels cost and who is paying for it.
He visits Paraguay, where the expansion of the soy industry has happened
in tandem with the violent suppression of small farmers and indigenous
communities. It's being alledged that farmers are being bullied into
growing soy with pesticides at the expense of their food crops, health,
farms, and – in many cases – their lives.
