Terms such as “marginal lands” have entered not just the scientific but the wider political debate on agrofuels.
Before considering what should be grown on marginal land, we need to define “marginal”. Land that might appear to be “marginal” to one person may be a vital resource to another. Although to the outsider, it may look idle or underused, it often provides food, fuel, medicine and building materials to local communities worldwide. It may be collective or common land used by such communities for generations, even though they have no formal title to it. Its fragility can mean that they use it on the basis of long rotations, only returning to cultivate plots after leaving them to regenerate for several years. Such land may be sacred to local communities and can also be vital to protecting water sources.
The paper concludes that dangerous assumptions have been made about the extent of “marginal” lands and how they are to be defined and new studies are needed to determine who lives on these “marginal” lands, and where, and to what extent genuine wastelands are available.
Very little land would be truly “marginal”. Land that is “marginal” to one person may be a vital resource to another.
According to the author, the myth of the marginal lands should not be used just to justify harmful agrofuel developments.

By: The Gaia Foundation, Biofuelwatch, the African Biodiversity Network, et al.

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