Is bioethanol a sustainable fuel or a threat to food for the poor?
March 26, 2007
With global warming and the spectre of a looming worldwide shortage of fossil fuels, the increased use of alternative fuels has tended to be welcomed wherever inroads have been made.
Not so in Brazil, where, according to Reuters, the Roman Catholic Church has warned that the rapid increase in ethanol production from sugar cane could have "a devastating social and environmental impact in the countryside".
Brazil has pioneered the large-scale use of ethanol as motor fuel and is lining up more than $8 billion (R58 billion) in investment in the next four years to boost production.
The Catholic Church is worried that because cane production requires large-scale plantations, it will either drive people off the land or leave them vulnerable to long working hours, poor pay and physical strain.
Closer to home, the growth in the nascent biofuels sector has also raised a red flag because of fears that the commoditisation of maize, a staple basic food crop, will make it more expensive and deprive poorer families of much-needed food.
Maize prices are not controlled by the government and price-setting is left to the market.
An industry that is selling ethanol into a high-price fuel market will be able to pay more than poor people and food security will become more than just an issue of quantity.
Looked at globally, using data from the US-based Earth Policy Institute, the world's 800 million motorists will be competing for food with its 2 billion poorest people already struggling to stay alive.
Apparently, the maize required to fill the tank of a 4x4 vehicle with ethanol once would be enough to feed a person for a whole year.
It is worrying this issue does not seem to have informed the policy.
Jeremy Wakeford of the University of Cape Town School of Economics wrote recently that diminishing food security would undermine the rationale for the biofuels industry: its contribution to sustainable development goals.
The questions that will be raised by people who rely on maize as the basis for their survival will need to be answered before Ethanol Africa, which plans to build eight biofuel plants in South Africa, can secure the $110 million funding it needs.
A failure to deal with the thorny issues now could derail the whole programme in the future.
Given the potential importance of biofuels to economic development, this would be a pity.
WORKOUTS Almost 50 percent of South African women are overweight, according to Earth Times Health News, and a spate of new female-only gyms is springing up around South Africa to take advantage of this market.
Many women prefer a single-sex environment and South African franchise business Shapes for Women and US franchise systems Curves and Contours Express have opened outlets around South Africa in the past few years.
Sweaty men at the co-ed facilities are not the only problem women face at the gym. According to Barry Owen, the co-owner of the Shapes for Women franchise system, immaculately groomed women with near-flawless figures and kitted out in the latest gym gear can also make the more ordinary feel despondent.
Given this, starting a women-only gym would appear to be a good business proposition, especially if you are able to offer busy women, who are squeezing in exercise between work and family commitments, a 30-minute workout.
But after the debacle of Health & Racquet Club's demise, which saw many gym members heavily out of pocket, the paying public may be more than a little nervous of new start-ups in the multibillion-rand industry. Perhaps the feeling of security given by an established brand will outweigh those feelings of insecurity brought about by being the wrong shape.
Contribution by Samantha Enslin
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