The think tank World Resources Institute says the world food gap could be narrowed greatly if crop-based biofuels – made from corn, sugarcane or vegetable oils – are eliminated. In a working paper, WRI points to estimates that food production must rise by 70 percent by 2050 to feed the growing world population. “If crop-based biofuels were phased out, the 2050 crop calorie gap would decrease from 70 percent to about 60 percent, a significant step toward a sustainable food future,” says the report by Tim Searchinger and Ralph Heimlich.
WRI says some biofuels fit into its viewpoint. They include forest and agricultural residues, timber processing waste such as sawdust and “black liquor,” and leftover municipal wastes, unused manure and methane gas from landfills along with “biomass grown in excess of what would have been grown” anyway, such as winter cover crops or more productive tree plantations. “Using second generation technologies to convert crop residues into bioenergy has potential and avoids competition for land,” says WRI but it is skeptical of large-volume production from it. It says fuels from these sources should be prioritized “to energy uses that can probably not be met any other way, such as low-carbon fuels for airplanes.”
“(P)hasing out bioenergy that uses crops or that otherwise makes dedicated use of land is a sound step toward a sustainable food future,” says WRI, arguing that governments should not increase blend rates for ethanol in gasoline, “should phase out the varied subsidies and regulatory requirements for transportation biofuels made from crops or from sources that make dedicated use of land, and tighten their definitions of feedstocks that qualify as renewable energy.