INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
Informational handout:
BIOFUELS (AGROFUELS) –
Large Scale
In South America, Indigenous peoples attending a meeting on the benefits of biofuels asked why the term “bio” is
applied to the word fuels. After a long presentation of a large scale biofuels development within indigenous
territories, the community members said “bio” means life, and they didn’t see the biofuels industry respecting life.
They said it should be called “agrofuels”.
The rush for “biofuels” as a low-carbon energy source is causing serious damage – domestically within
the U.S./Canada and globally. Far from being sustainable, the spread of what are more accurately called
“agrofuels”, or liquid fuels produced from biomass grown in large-scale monocultures - is compromising
biodiversity, transforming precious land used for a food crop into a fuel crop, raising food costs and
fueling human rights violations with social, cultural and environmental justice concerns. Agribusiness,
oil, energy and auto companies are deceiving consumers and profiting by furthering the myth of a
biofuel solution to global warming. Even the term biofuel, which evokes nature and vitality, is
misleading. That’s why many Indigenous Peoples, local communities and environmental justice
organizations call these intensive, destructive industrial substances agrofuels.
Environmental organizations, the agricultural industry, venture capitalists, free trade advocates and
various U.S. federal and state politicians are all on a band wagon pushing corn-based ethanol (and other
combinations of agro crops, i.e. soy bean, switch grass, sunflower, etc.) as a new source of fuel to meet
our society’s addiction to energy consumption. However, there are questions on whether large-scale
domestic production of corn-based ethanol and other fuel crops are going to provide “energy
independence” from foreign oil as claimed, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt climate
change/global warming. There are concerns whether agrofuels would truly revitalize the farm belt and
keep the U.S. economy growing. With the new era of “peak oil”, which only means the end of cheap oil,
there is the potential reality that society would just transfer our addiction from fossil fuels to agrofuels
without reducing consumption.
Climate Change: A primary concern is the potential for agrofuels to accelerate climate change, rather
than combat it. Agrofuel production involves considerable fossil fuel energy use in planting and
harvesting, and the industrial processing of agrofuels are all additional greenhouse gases. As an
example, studies have reported the use of corn ethanol results in almost as much CO2 as gasoline - more
INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK
methane and nitrous oxide, and considerably more water vapor emissions. In addition, most ethanol
plants are powered by coal fired a power facility which has the highest amount of greenhouse gas
emissions of all the fossil fuels, including the impacts resulting from the mining of coal.
Increase Food Costs, Loss of Food Sovereignty and Food Security: With petroleum prices going
up, food prices will increase. As more land is used to grow fuel-energy crops rather than food this would
turn prime agricultural land over to servicing the energy commodity market, reducing food production
and increasing even further, the price of food.
Damage Biodiversity: As agriculture is intensified to meet the new demand, for example through the
increase in monocultures and genetically modified agrofuel crops, this would violate Indigenous Original
Instructions that call upon Indigenous Peoples to be the caretakers/guardians of our sacred Mother
Earth and its ecosystem. Agriculture or croplands would continue to be forced to expand into sensitive
and biodiversity rich areas such as grasslands, wetlands, peat lands, forests and marginal land.
Human Rights Abuses: On a global level, in order to make way for fuel crop plantations, the land
rights of Indigenous and local communities are often violated. The encroachment of industrial
plantations forces small family farmers to shift from subsistence to export-driven commodity farming, if
they’re not pushed off their land entirely. Agrofuel crops-plantation workers in the Global South often
face abuse, exploitation, and exposure to toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Globally, one of the agrofuels
with the most contentious issues is palm oil. Demand for palm oil from both the food and agrofuel
industries has led to massive expansion of oil palm tree plantations resulting in the destruction of huge
areas of rainforest across South East Asia.
Water and Soil Degradation: Agricultural chemicals can make their way into soil and water supplies,
contaminating soils, drinking water and killing aquatic life. Furthermore, corn production uses more
herbicides, insecticides and nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop produced in the U.S., and these
chemicals invade ground and surface water, thereby causing more water pollution than any other crop.
U.S. corn production also causes more soil erosion than any other U.S. crop. The availability of water can
also be affected if supplies are diverted to irrigate crops leading to the risk of drought in some areas.
Within many regions of the U.S., reduced precipitation has lowered water supplies and caused local
competition for limited water resources.
Even if all cropland in the U.S. were used to grow corn and all the corn were used to make ethanol, we
would not produce enough ethanol to replace our over-consumption of gasoline. The corn required to
make enough ethanol to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank could feed one person for a year.
This handout is a brief overview of concerns that our Native Nations should know about. For
more information, check out these two references:
1. The False Promise of Biofuels, The Sustainable Scale Project, September 2007, published by the
International Forum on Globalization, Web Site: http://www.ifg.org/pdf/biofuels.pdf
2. Agrofuels: Towards a Reality Check in Nine Key Areas, June 2007, Web Site:
http://www.corporateeurope.org/docs/AgrofuelsRealityCheck.pdf
INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK, P.O. BOX 485, BEMIDJI, MN 56691
TEL: 218.751.4967, e-Mail: ienenergy@igc.org or ien@igc.org