Can biofuels help promote agricultural development?
For many poor people in both urban and rural areas, higher food prices pose an immediate threat to their food security. Although biofuels are only one cause of the recent high food prices, expanded biofuel production will tend to keep food prices high into the future. The effects of high food prices on the poor can be mitigated through appropriately designed and targeted safety nets that support access to food such as direct food distribution, targeted food subsidies and cash transfers, or nutritional programmes including school feeding. Price controls and export bans are often used to protect consumers from higher food prices but these measures may actually worsen the food security crisis Instead, it is important to allow rising prices to reach farmers to provide an incentive for increased production and as a consequence an increased supply. More…
