UN Secretary General calls biofuels a scandal

Daily Biofuels News Digest , 14.05.2008 20:41

UN Secretary-General calls on world leaders to attend Food vs Fuel summit; new UN Food head calls biofuels a “scandal”, as USDA projects 2008 corn prices lower than futures market.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that a UN task force on the food crisis will prepare recommendations for the June 3-5 High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, which Secretary Ban said world leaders should attend.

The UN’s top food adviser, human rights campaigner and academic Olivier de Schutter, said the World Bank and IMF had “gravely underestimated the need to invest in agriculture,” and said that “The ambitious goals for biofuel production set by the United States and the European Union are irresponsible,” calling biofuels investment a “scandal that only serves the interests of a tiny lobby.”

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a review of land-use conversion by biofuel producers, in response to the global increase in food prices. Ban, who placed climate change at the top of the UN agenda, is responding to internal pressure from UN food agencies facing a crisis over rising prices.

The Guardian has reported that some senior UN officials are attacking the Secretary-General for being “out of touch” and not knowing “what is really going on in our agencies”. Ban said “This steeply rising food price is a new phenomenon,” he said. “We have only seven years left to meet the target of 2015,” referring to the Millenium Development Goal of halving global hunger by 2015, adding “This is very serious.”

Meanwhile, the USDA released its May harvest outlook, and projects that wheat production will climb 16 percent, corn will decline 7 percent, and soybeans will increase 20 percent. Prices are projected at $5.00-$6.00 for corn, down from the $6.14 July futures contract on the CBOT; $6.60-$8.10 per bushel compared to $8.05 for the July CBOT contract,; soybean oil is projected at $0.50-$0.54 per pound, compared to $0.6128 for the July CBOT contract. Export demand for corn, wheat and soybeans are expected to drop based on high production and lower imports in the EU-27 countries.

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