A number of coincidental global driving forces are converging to bring issues of climate change, long-run environmental sustainability of economic growth, and global food security and wellbeing to the forefront of policy thought and political discussion. A rapidly increasing demand for energy is being felt most acutely by those countries which are dependent upon energy imports. A desire to decrease dependence on foreign energy resources and concerns about global warming are among the key factors that drive continued interest in renewable energy sources and in biofuels, in particular. Increasing levels of uncertainty about future supplies of fossil fuels, declining productivity of some sources, and increasing costs of expanding proven reserves are pushing national energy policy-makers to search for alternative, clean sources. Furthermore, steadily increasing energy prices causing an increase in world food prices also rank among the top concerns.
In this report, the authors investigate the interactions between biofuel demand and production and the demand and production of food and feed crops, in order to better assess how future growth in biofuel production could impact food prices and consumption, food security, among other dimensions. While the scenario-driven quantitative analysis takes on a global perspective, they also consider the various factors that might affect economic and environmental outcomes at the country-level, so that they can better understand how different biofuel development plans might interact with world food markets and affect human livelihoods.
This paper is structured in eight sections. In the Introduction the authors analyse drivers for biofuels and set a policy overview. The second section is based on the scenario analysis, methodology issues and baseline. The third section shows the results and implications of the previous analysis. Section 4 explores how to ensure environmental sustainability and section 5 investigates how to safeguard food production. Section 6 studies how to ensure sustainable bioenergy markets in developing countries and section 7 evaluates how to ensure pro-poor bioenergy development. Lastly, section 8 presents summary and conclusions.

By: M. Rosegrant, M. Ewing, S. Msangi, T. Zhu (WBGU)

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