OPINION:Brazilians argue that EU and US methods of biofuel production are far less efficient than the Brazilian method, but they are still being heavily subsidised and promoted, writes Tom Hennigan.
JUST A few years ago, biofuels were being hailed as part of the solution to the looming crises of dwindling oil reserves and global warming. But now the cooing over biofuels has turned to condemnation. They are being blamed for the destruction of the rainforests, for rocketing food prices and for the instability these price rises are spreading in the world's poorest countries.
There are many factors behind the spike in world food prices.
Australia, a major wheat exporter, is suffering a severe drought.
The rise of China and India means that hundreds of millions of people who before could only afford one meal a day can now afford two.
The weak dollar - in which commodities are priced - means sellers are looking for higher prices to insulate themselves from the impact of the greenback's decline and are pushing staples beyond the reach of the world's poorest.
But increasingly, biofuels are taking much of the blame, buying up as they do farmers' crops to turn into fuel for the cars of the planet's well-off.
However, the argument from Brazilians in government and the biofuel industry is that there are biofuels, and then there are heavily subsidised EU and US biofuels.
In support of their argument, Brazilians point out that their principal biofuel - ethanol, on which the country has placed a very large strategic bet - is made from sugar cane, which is the most efficient method of production.
The EU and US use far less efficient methods of biofuel production - mainly from rapeseed in the EU and corn in the US.
Science shows that, environmentally, the advantages of rape and corn are marginal. For every unit of energy used in the production of ethanol from cane, eight units of energy are created. Corn and rape create less than two units of energy for every unit used in production, both with far lower carbon savings than cane.
Because of this, biofuels from rape and corn would be a non-starter economically without government protection and subsidies. But between them, the US and EU spend billions on promoting the least environmentally and economically efficient ways of making biofuels. And they are not just promoting them, but sheltering them behind tariffs from competition with the more efficient cane-based stuff.
In essence, the US and the EU are using taxpayers' money to pay farmers incentives to switch from producing crops for food to producing an extremely inefficient and environmentally dubious fuel, helping to exacerbate the spike in food prices into the bargain.
Brazil's ramped-up ethanol production has not had any impact on its food production. The country expects 2008 to produce a record grains harvest.
Brazil is one of the world's few places with ample land available to be brought into agricultural production - and that is not even counting the Amazon (on which more later).
In fact, Brazilians argue that ethanol production would be best left in the hands of tropical countries, which have the heat and rainfall to grow the highly efficient cane, while temperate regions like the EU and the US midwest should be left to grow maize, wheat and rice.
This, they say, will provide a huge stimulus to cane cultivation in places like Africa, India and the Caribbean, boosting the development of a product currently handicapped in such countries because of the tariff-and-subsidy regimes in the US and EU.
If these countries could make more money from growing cane, they could develop more rapidly.
This of course brings up the question of the environmental impact of cane cultivation. It is a chemical-intensive monoculture that is being blamed for the destruction of natural habitats in South America, Africa and Asia.
Much of this is true, despite the great lengths that Brazilians involved in the ethanol supply chain go to defend cane's environmental credentials.
However, there is something morally dubious in the rich world subsidising production of biofuels at the expense of the world's poorest citizens, but when some poor countries seek to make those same products more efficiently, a hue and cry is raised about environmental vandalism.
Why, Brazilian farmers ask, should chemical-intensive monoculture farming be fine - subsidised even - in rich countries, where it played a fundamental part in their development into the prosperous places they are today, and yet attempts to expand it in developing countries be frowned upon? Where are the great forests and savannahs of Europe and North America?
Thankfully, most Brazilians do not advocate chopping down the Amazon to feed and fuel the world. For a developing country with millions of desperately poor citizens, its government spends considerable amounts of money and effort trying to preserve it.
But it could well happen anyway, unless the international community does its part and finds a mechanism that financially revalues places like the Amazon so that they are worth more intact than razed. Otherwise, our ever-more copied calorie-rich and motorised lifestyle will continue to value energy and food more highly than rainforest, and history shows that the market usually finds a way to realise such financial valuations, maybe not immediately, but eventually.
Tom Hennigan is a journalist based in São Paulo