Kierstin Lilly
9/9/10
4:50pm
Foreign firms are seizing at least 5 million hectares (19,300 square miles) of land in Africa to grow crops because of a biofuel demand. Sugar cane, jatropha and palm oil till be grown in 11 countries to be turned into fuel. This project will involve clearing massive amounts of forests and vegetation. The proponents of biofuels argue that “they are renewable and can help fight climate change because the growing plants ingest as much carbon dioxide from the air as the fuels made from them emit when burned.” Rice farmers have been forced off their land for the biofuel projects and there are similar plans underway for the thousands of miles of more land. The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa has said that biofuels will boost investment in land and that this plan “could have a positive effect on food production, and if properly managed would not mean destroying natural forests.
The only problem with this is that these foreign firms have not informed us that the project will be properly managed. This article practically gives the reader the idea that all the biofuel demand is doing is taking away land from the African inhabitants that they could be using for vegetation, food, and farming for their own communities. The fact that rice farmers are being forced off their land so that sugar cane can be produced is not human or environmentally sound for these communities. This expansion of biofuels seems to be doing nothing but “transforming forests and natural vegetaion into fuel crops, taking away food-growing farmland from communities, and creating conflicts with local people over land ownership.”
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