Biofuels and ‘Land Grabs’ in Poor Nations

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, warned on Thursday that biofuels remain an important driver behind big land acquisitions and land leases in poor countries that jeopardize local inhabitants’ food security. About one-fifth of the activities that Mr. De Schutter deemed as “land grabs” – often backed by hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds – are projects in parts of Africa and Asia aimed at growing crops to make feedstock for biofuels. “There still is a vast market for first-generation agrofuels,” said Mr. De Schutter, who added that he considered the safeguards adopted by the European Union in 2008 “absolutely insufficient to monitor to the impacts on the countries concerned by shifts in land use for agrofuels production.”...NYTimes

Limits on oil & gas production drives their price up, which makes biofuels more competitive, providing the incentive to switch from food to fuel crops, which drives up the price of food & feed crops, resulting in higher food prices.

Damn those markets. They just won't do what the central planners want.