Growing demand for biofuels 'could lead to food shortages'*

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 1:54am BST 18/04/2007

Britain could face food shortages within 25 years as a result of growing
demand for biofuels and a rising world population, a leading adviser to
industry and the Government said yesterday.

Competition for land between fuel and food crops, expanding populations
in developing countries, and climate change were all going to put
pressure on world food supplies, said Prof Bill McKelvey, chief
executive of the Scottish Agriculture College in Edinburgh.

He said: "We are becoming less self-sufficient in food. I don't believe
that if we look 50 years ahead we will be in a food-secure situation.
It's possible in the next 25 to 50 years that there will be food
shortages in the UK."

World reserves of grain had already fallen from 100 days' supply in 2000
to 40 days in 2006, said Prof McKelvey. This trend could be expect to
increase due to the EU's promise to increase the component of biofuel in
road fuel.

"Making use of biofuels is not a mistake; it's the correct way to go in
terms of reducing our fossil fuel usage and reducing our carbon
footprint over all," said Prof McKelvey.

"But we have to remember the competitive situation between the use of
grain for food production and biofuel production."

He could not see a solution to world food shortages without farming
becoming more intensive. "We need more radical solutions," he said.
"Organic farming does not equal good and conventional farming equal bad."

GM plants would allow farming to be intensified without the health risks
of chemical treatments.

"I would prefer to eat a genetically modified plant than one that had
been treated with a pesticide," Prof McKelvey added.

Wheat production had increased four-fold in the last 50 years and in the
next 50 years would probably have to rise by the same level again, he
forecast. To produce the greater yields needed, people would have to
overcome their fear of genetically modified crops, said Prof McKelvey.

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, the organic farming
body, said: "Prof McKelvey is right that food security will be one of
the defining issues of the 21st century but he is wrong that we can
tackle this only through industrial-type agriculture.

"Well-managed intensive organic agriculture can equal or exceed yields
from conventional systems. Organic farming can feed the world but we
have to change our diet away from white meat and towards red meat, which
can have useful by-products for sustainable farming."