Bio-fuels production drives up food prices

RISING production of bio-fuels has distorted government budgets, helped to drive up food prices and led to deforestation in southeast Asia, the chief scientist of Britain’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has claimed.

“The way we are producing bio-fuels is not the way to go,” former World Bank chief scientist Robert Watson said, citing the US ethanol programme and German support for biodiesel as among the least cost-effective.

He said biofuels production from sugar cane in Brazil may be one of the only sustainable methods and there needed to be aggressive research and development and in five to 10 years time better technologies could be commercially viable.