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July 2007 ( 3.4 MB)
Tipo: Whole issue
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

In this special issue of Seedling we focus on agrofuels. Visit the resource page on agrofuels where more information is available: http://www.grain.org/agrofuels

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In this special agrofuels issue... (124 kb)
Tipo: Editorial
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Stop the agrofuel craze! (472 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

An introductory article that, among other things, looks at the mind-boggling numbers that are being bandied around: the Indian government is talking of planting 14 million hectares of land with jatropha; the Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120 million hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops; and an agrofuel lobby is speaking of 379 million hectares being available in 15 African countries.

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Corporate power: Agrofuels and the expansion of agribusiness (793 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Corporate interest in agrofuels has gone from a casual trot to a full-on stampede over the last few years. For business and politicians alike, agrofuels are certainly one of the more palatable “renewable” forms of energy because they fit easily into the existing petroleum-based economy. But they also present opportunities for profit that the new order of “green” business has wasted no time in capturing. Big money is now flowing into agrofuel projects across the world – with big consequences.

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Corporate power: The palm-oil–biodiesel nexus
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Palm oil is big business for the production of biodiesel.

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Corporate power: Alternative energy crops and next-generation agrofuels
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

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Corporate power: The sugar-cane–ethanol
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

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Agrofuels in Asia: Fuelling poverty, conflict, deforestation (517 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: Almuth Ernsting Fecha: julio 2007

In no other region in the world is the absurdity of the frenzied rush into agrofuels more blatant than in Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. Far from helping to reduce global warming, it is leading to a big increase in global carbon emissions. Just as serious, it is cementing the control over large areas of land of industrial groups that are amongst the most ruthless in the world in terms of environmental destruction, labour conditions and human rights abuses.

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Snapshot of the agrofuel situation in some Asian countries
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Traduciones: français  

Jatropha – the agrofuel of the poor? (160 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Traduciones: français  

The new scramble for Africa (762 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Africa, with its large land area and cheap labour, is an obvious target for agrofuel developers. As one European agrofuel lobby group likes to point out, just 15 African countries have a combined arable land base larger than India available for agrofuel crop production. And already millions of hectares of the continent’s so-called “fallow” lands have been surveyed and allocated for agrofuels.

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Latin America - João Pedro Stedile (450 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

South America is becoming a key area for agrofuels, both ethanol made from sugar cane and biodiesel produced from soya oil and, to a lesser extent, palm oil. Latin American activists, who were the first to come up with the term agrocombustible (agrofuels), have also been among the first to denounce what is going on. Here they explain in their own words how the agrofuel craze is affecting their continent.

João Pedro Stedile is one of the leaders of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Brazil’s Landless Movement. In its recent conference in Brasilia, attended by 18,000 activists, the MST spoke out strongly against the damage being caused by agrofuel monoculture (http://www.mst.org.br).

Traduciones: français  

Latin America - Max Thomet
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Max Thomet is a member of the collective CET SUR, which has its headquarters in the south of Chile. Its mission is to contribute to the mobilisation for social and cultural transformation led by social movements, which are trying to build sustainable societies through the reinvigoration of traditional values and the territorial empowerment of people at local level (http://www.cetsur.org).

Latin America - Norma Giarraca
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Norma Giarraca is a lecturer in sociology at the Instituto Gino Germani in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She specialises in the study of social protest.

Latin America - Germán Velez
Tipo: Sub article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Germán Velez is an activist from the Grupo Semillas (Seeds Group), a Colombian non-governmental organisation that works on environmental issues with local communities (http://www.semillas.org.co).

Latin America - Soya nexus in South America (219 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

Along with the rapid expansion of ethanol production, largely manufactured from sugar cane, South America is also beginning to play a key role as a producer of biodiesel. The main feedstock is soya and, for the soya farmers and the multinational grain companies, who were facing problems of overproduction, the new market outlet is a godsend. It gives them the perfect pretext for continuing their take-over of the continent.

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Further reading: good materials on agrofuels (153 kb)
Tipo: Resources
Autor: GRAIN Fecha: julio 2007

The volume of recent articles, papers and other materials on agrofuels can be overwhelming. Below we list some that we found particularly useful when preparing this Seedling.

Fear over growing WIPO-FAO links (178 kb)
Tipo: Article
Autor: Geoff Tansey Fecha: julio 2007

Farmers’ and peasants’ lives are increasingly affected by international rules made by governments at remote international meetings. For some time transnational corporations have been using intergovernmental forums to extend their influence over food and farming policies in the developing world. For example, the introduction of rules on intellectual property (e.g. patents and plant variety protection) in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and, via WTO, into agriculture was very much a corporate-driven project. But sometimes smaller, stealthier steps can have an equally disturbing impact. We look at what is going on in two international organisations.