Food versus Fuel: Toward a New Paradigm—The Need for a Holistic Approach

A key objective of this paper is to provide an assessment of the current and future situation on the “food versus fuel” debate and to contribute to possible alternatives to minimise or avoid future conflict. The debate has centred on three main areas: (i) food versus biofuel production, (ii) their positive and negative effects (i.e., GHG, climate change, and the broader environment), and (iii) a socioeconomic impact. The debate has been controversial because it has largely been driven by politics, ethical/moral considerations, and vested interests rather than by science. The paper focuses on food prices, land competition, GHG, energy balance, and energy subsidies and concerns with the rapid expansion of bioenergy for electricity and heat, climatic changes, the role of agriculture as a key factor, the potential of biomass energy resources, and the various alternatives to minimize or avoid conflict between food and fuel production. Biomass for energy is both “part of the problem and part of the solution.” It proposes a holistic approach: a new paradigm that takes full account of the diverse and complex nature of biomass energy sources and states that the fundamental underlying causes are social injustice, inequality, waste, and so forth, rather than land competition for food and fuel.