Forums discuss climate change, biotechnology, biofuels impact on African agriculture

European consumers shunning imported food supposedly to limit climate change should not make African farmers a scapegoat, a Brussels conference has been told.

In Britain, several supermarkets have begun labelling products flown into the country with stickers marked 'air-freighted', to reflect concern about the contribution of aviation to global warming.

But Benito Müller, a director at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, dismissed the concept of food miles as "an extremely oversimplified indicator" of ecological impact.

Declaring himself "really angry" with the implicit message that agricultural produce from Africa should be avoided, Müller claimed that less greenhouse gas emissions are often emitted from the cultivation and transport of such goods than they would be if grown in Europe.

Strawberries imported from Kenya during the winter, he maintained, have a lower 'carbon footprint' than those grown in a heated British greenhouse, even when their transport by air is taken into account.

Müller argued that African farmers should not have to suffer because of efforts to cut discharge of carbon dioxide, the main gas triggering climate change. Britain, he added, is responsible for fifty times more greenhouse gas emissions than Kenya.

Efforts to increase the use of biofuels were also called into question at a Feb. 13 conference organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), a body dealing with relations between Europe and some 80 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

The European Union has set itself a target that biofuels should provide 10 percent of the energy needed to power cars and other modes of transport by 2020, despite growing doubts over whether it is wise to rely so heavily on these fuels.

Two new papers published in Science magazine have calculated that production of the most popular forms of biofuels causes a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions because of land clearance.

Palm oil, a key biofuel used in European cars, is produced through the deforestation on lands rich in peat. It would take an estimated 840 years to claw back the amount of carbon dioxide released from that process, according to scientists, through the eventual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions caused by using biofuels rather than conventional petrol or diesel.

Mark Rosegrant from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute cited worries that land that should be used to grow food for the poor and hungry is instead being used for biofuels. "The continued expansion of biofuels is increasing food prices and increasing malnutrition in a number of developing countries," he said.

Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz from the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development in Geneva said that African countries may have to spend up to 10 percent of their gross domestic product on adapting to climate change by the latter part of this century. Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body banding together scientists from across the world, predicted that the output from rain-dependent agriculture in Africa could halve by 2020 due to worsening drought.

While admitting that there is "a lot of contention" surrounding biofuels, he nonetheless argued that they may bring benefits to ACP countries, which today account for 9 percent of global trade in biofuels. Jatropha, an oily shrub suited to drylands, "has the possibility of generating not only climate change gains but also economic gains," he said.

Rachel Berger, a climate change policy advisor with the anti-poverty group Practical Action, said that many of the technologies being trumpeted in the West as beneficial for humanity would not help small-scale African farmers. Genetically modified crops, she added, pose "a real threat to the environment."

"They are heavily promoted by companies who want to make lots of money, and you don't make lots of money out of very poor people," she argued. "So there is a hidden agenda there." She argued instead that many of the techniques needed to adapt to droughts have "already been tried and tested."

In Western Zimbabwe, for example, the use of contour ridges to trap water during the few days when rain falls, has been "effective in increasing productivity."

Leo Peskett from the Overseas Development Institute in London said that cutting down forests and the deterioration of land contributes to about one-fifth of global emissions of climate changing gases. A market-based scheme to encourage tropical countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) could result in benefits that are "very great," he said. Liberia could be offered compensation equivalent to the amount of income now accruing from the logging of trees.

It will, though, be "challenging" to ensure small farmers are helped by REDD, he added.

Ishmael Sunga from the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions contended that the discussion over climate change has been too academic and that poor farmers have felt excluded from it.

"How are you able to position yourself to deal with the risks associated with climate change, if you are not even aware of the risk?" he added. "There is not sufficient participation of farmers in the debate; this is partly a result of a lack of knowledge and understanding of what the risks are. It appears that farmers arrive late when the train has left the station on the discussion about important issues.

IPS