Warning over 'disastrous' green fuel production policy

Published on Friday 4 January 2008 20:32

RISING production of biofuels is driving up food prices, one of the government's top scientific advisers warned yesterday.

Professor Robert Watson also claimed the trend was distorting government budgets and prompting deforestation in south-east Asia.

He said: "The way we are currently producing biofuels is not the way to go."

Prof Watson, who serves as chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, has previously worked in a similar role for the World Bank and in senior posts at the White House and with Nasa.

He told the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday that biofuel production from sugar cane in Brazil might be one of the only sustainable current methods.

He added that aggressive research and development was needed and it was possible that better technologies could be commercially viable within a decade.

Crispin Tickell, director of the Policy Foresight Programme at Oxford University's James Martin institute of science and civilisation, said US ethanol policy had been "disastrous".

Mr Tickell said more attention needed to be paid to renewable energy sources such as solar and geothermal.

"Biofuels have a role to play but only as one of a number of technologies," he told the conference.

Prof Watson said climate change in the short term was favourable for UK agriculture, lengthening the growing season, but overall would be detrimental.

"A changing climate overall is likely to be negative for the agricultural sector and demands a significant amount of adaptation," he said.

Some have cited genetically modified crops, such as new drought-resistant crop varieties, as key to adapting.

"Clearly it has potential but we need to look at it on a case-by- case basis," Prof Watson said.

He also suggested farmers needed to be paid for environmental services such as capturing carbon or helping produce fresh water supplies.

"Agriculture is more than production," he said.

Mr Tickell said there also needed to be greater focus on human diets involving more plants and less meat.

"We need to look at the healthy diet, which we have tended to abandon," he added.