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As the price of food rises and stories are told of people around the world stocking up on commodities such as rice, questions are being asked about the role biofuel is playing in what many predict will become a worldwide crisis.

In North America, the increase in crops such as corn and canola, planted to service the growing need for biofuel, is changing the business of agriculture.

It is also changing in developing countries, where there is also a push to grow soybeans and corn for use in biofuels. Critics suggest the resulting changes are anything but positive, pointing to stories of small farmers being pushed from their land to make way for big biofuel companies and chemical spraying on crops that is harming citizens.

What do you think? Do you have questions about the role the race to use more biofuel is having on the world's economy? Two activists working with developing countries will be online Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET to answer your questions. Leave your question now using the comment function and join us then to read their answers.

Javiera Rulli is trained as a biologist and works directly with rural communities in Argentina and Paraguay to document human rights abuses connected to the expansion of soy monoculture.

"Ongoing human rights violations in Paraguay go hand in hand with the advancement of soy monocultures. Agribusiness corporations knowingly take advantage of the fact that in Paraguay corruption florishes, while environmental regulations or human rights are not respected," she says.

Wilhelmina "Ditdit" Pelegrina, from the Philippines, is trained as an agronomist and works to promote agricultural biodiversity conservation in communities across Southeast Asia. In her ten years with the Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), she has helped co-ordinate projects and lobby internationally and regionally to strengthen farmers' rights to manage their own plant genetic resources.

"The situation is much more complex now that it was before. At the same time, we can no longer go back to the old production system because there are also merits in the current system. We must therefore find ways to cope with the ever changing system while reducing risks and addressing the disparity of access to land, market and technology," she says.

Ms. Rulli has been deeply involved in South American social movements dealing with peasant rights at the grassroots and international policy level. She currently works as a campaigner and researcher with Base Investigaciones Sociales, a Paraguay-based organization that works for social development through changes of ideas, attitudes and values. Ms. Rulli co-ordinates the National Watch Group on Agrofuels in Paraguay and was a lead organizer of the 2006 Chake Ñuha: National Seminar on Agrofuels and Environmental Services in Paraguay. Javiera Rulli is a co-author of the 2006 report 'Paraguay Sojero' (Soy Producer Paraguay) compiled by Grupo de Reflexión Rural which exposes the widespread human rights violations, including biodiversity destruction, related to soy expansion in Paraguay. The report provides detailed accounts of violent acts against rural and indigenous communities in Paraguay. Javiera has also worked in The Netherlands with ASEED (Action of Solidarity, Environment, Equality and Diversity).

Ms. Pelegrina has worked with civil society organizations, extension agencies and farmers groups in Bhutan, Lao PDF, Indonesia and Vietnam to promote sustainable agricultural practices, as well as processes such as farmers' field school, participatory rural appraisals, and participatory plant breeding. She is also on the Board of directors of USC Canada.

As the executive director of SEARICE, Ms. Pelegrina sheds light on concrete field level experiences on agricultural biodiversity conservation, participatory plant breeding, seed systems enhancement, and farmers' rights to local, national, regional and international platforms, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

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John McGrath, Globeandmail.com: Welcome everybody. I'm John McGrath with Globe and Mail online, and today we're discussing the role of biofuels in the current food crisis with Javiera Rulli and Ditdit Pelegrina, experts on food and agriculture in the developing world. With the recent run-up in food prices, we've seen riots across the developing world as the poorest communities struggle to feed themselves. How responsible are biofuels for the mess we're in?

Javiera, Ditdit, we see so many different reasons for the current run-up in food prices: biofuels, the price of oil, the changing diets of the new middle-class, and even financial speculation. Is it possible to disentangle all of these things, and maybe isolate which factor or factors are most responsible? Or is it all too intertwined to make a call?

Javiera Rulli and Ditdit Pelegrina: First, I would start with what you have not mentioned as a cause of the food crisis. You don't mention climate change and crop failures, which is a main cause of the food problem. Maybe not on a world scale, but crop failure has been very important in Latin America, and has occurred alongside the loss of land, land-use changes, and lost productivity — all of which have all contributed to hunger. Existing policy doesn't assure good agricultural performance, which is the main determinant of food availability. There is less diversity in the crops, so they are more vulnerable to failure — and crop failure around the world in the last year has led to increased prices around the world. A big factor is also increased consumption of meat especially in emerging countries — where the grains go to the animals instead of people.

This is just the beginning of what is coming. Food crisis will happen more frequently as a result of crop failure from climate change. At the same time, the policy framework is not building resilient farm systems, instead they're encouraging monocropping and migration out of the farms into the cities. There are now more people in the cities than in the rural areas. With this movement, there are less people on the farm growing food — and it means that more people in urban areas are not in control of their food.

On disentangling the causes of this crisis, you really can't. It's a confluence of issues that came together at the same time to create a disaster. It's important to remember it's not only this year. Rice prices have been increasing since 2001, and this situation was predicted. It's the result of the liberalized nature of global markets, which was the advice of the World Bank and other experts.

Russell Barth from Nepean writes: Hemp produces more ethanol per acre than corn, and does so at a lower cost and with less damage to the soil. Also, one acre of hemp can produce up to 1,000 gallons of Methanol in just four months. What about food? The hemp tops go to food, and the stalks go for fuel, fibre and building materials, so it is like growing two crops in one field. Hemp will even grow on damaged, exhausted or marginal soil, so we don't need to use our prime farmland to grow car fuel. Hemp also refreshes the soil, so putting it into rotation with other crops will actually heal - -- not deplete -- the soil. So why do we keep using corn for fuel when hemp is cheaper, better, healthier and cleaner?

Javiera Rulli: Regardless of whether we use corn or hemp as the raw material, the fact is that land is converted from being grown for food crops to being used to grow biofuels. Though I'm not an expert on conditions in the US, I know that in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, this kind of land conversion often involves small-scale farmers being pushed off their lands and a large-scale plantation moving in, to grow crops for export. There's research here in Canada indicating that it wouldn't be able to grow enough biofuels within the country, and would need to import the crops. Even biofuels produced by converting land within the US from say soy to corn has effects on world prices. For example, this particular conversion has led to increases in soy prices, which has induced the Brazilians to cut down more rainforests to plant more soy — as the recent Time Magazine Article, "The Clean Energy Myth", points out. It's because of these environmental and social costs that we think that calling such crops "bio" fuels, where "bio" is the Greek word for "life", is not accurate. They're agrofuels.

As regards the potential for hemp as a food crop, and its relative efficiency for conversion into fuel, I can't say that I can see Canadians or Americans changing their diet to eat much more hemp. But I do know that massive plantings of just one crop over a broad area — known as "monocropping" — is bad for agricultural biodiversity as it uses massive amounts of pesticides and impoverishes the soils. This is increasingly critical in the battle against climate change. It also tends to go hand in hand with large plantation farming that is controlled by transnational corporations.

Also, you mention marginal lands. But there are no marginal lands. All lands are used for something — there is biodiversity, there are indigenous peoples, there are wild hemp plants. The expansion of industrial monocultures for export has taken place on the most optimal lands in developing countries, so the campesinos (small farmers) and indigenous peoples have been displaced to these "marginal lands". So they're not marginal to them!

Vivaldo Latoche from Ottawa writes: Considering that warm weather is an essential part for planting and harvesting food. Why is it that most tropical countries are unable to feed their own people? In Canada, we have only one season to plant and harvest. However, Canada is always sending food to Third World countries.

Ditdit Pelegrina: Warm weather is, unfortunately, not enough for plentiful harvests. A steady supply of water, from wells, rainfall or irrigation, is also very important. There are also many other factors that determine how much food a country can produce, include access to good-quality seeds that are well—adapted to local conditions, and other inputs. It's also important to remember that the population density of most developing countries is much higher, that is, they have more people living off of less land. Some of this land is vulnerable to climate change impacts, like floods in Bangladesh and drought in northern Africa.

There is unfair land distribution, the result of the legacy of colonial times that has been taken over by corporate ownership that grows for export. The policy structure framework and rural institutions are not conducive to our being able to use our weather, biodiversity and soil to grow more and better soil. So the priority is not to feed our own people but to send exports to the North. It's also important to understand that within the south, there are the privileged and less privileged.

But I think your comment that "most tropical countries are unable to feed their own people" isn't correct. Many tropical countries feed their own people, and then export to Canada. Although Canada does export wheat and other bulk food staples, we import higher value food products, like fruit, vegetables and spices from developing countries. Developing countries' food production has been crippled by structural adjustment programs, promoted by the World Bank and the IMF, which reduced the subsidies given to farmers. At the same time, farmers are being encouraged to grow crops for export to Canada and other developed countries — while hunger continues in their countries. This is unjust. People should be growing food for their own consumption, not stocking our foodshelves. Even worse, much of the fresh food they send over here is rejected because of food standards, left to rot in storehouses, and they don't even get the cash for their work.

The bottom line is that developing countries can feed their own people, and many do. But food policies are inhibiting this food sovereignty. We need a change in policy that supports farmers in developing countries, and encourages them to grow food for local consumption.

Greg Ohio from Cleveland United States writes: We often hear that making ethanol consumes more petroleum than it saves. Is this true? Can consumers make a difference by avoiding ethanol-blended gasoline?

Javiera Rulli: It is indeed true that in many cases, ethanol consumes more petroleum than it saves. A recent study from Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley found that corn ethanol requires 29 percent more fossil fuel energy to produce a given amount of energy than would be required if the fossil fuels were used directly. Petroleum is used to create the fertilizers and pesticides, and to drive the tractors, that create the corn plant. Fossil fuel energy is needed to pump out the water that feeds the plants. It's used to power the trucks and trains that transport the corn, and used to power the processing of the corn into energy. David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University in the US, one of the authors of the study, says that "There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel. These strategies are not sustainable."

When you take into account the nitrogen emitted by the plants, it becomes even more clear that growing corn for ethanol if anything makes climate change worse — as pointed out by another study by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Professor Paul Crutzen. And the deforestation that's taking place in Southeast Asia, and particularly Indonesia, to grow palm oil. The UNDP recently pointed out that Indonesia has become the third largest emitter of C02 in the world due to the cleaning and burning of forests to grow palm oil for agrofuels. So I would say that if you're looking to help the environment, avoid ethanol-blended gasoline. Instead, support other ways of cleaning our energy, like investing in carbon capture and storage, and reducing energy use. Also, there are many other of renewable energy such as wind and solar.

According to the energy balance studies, the case that is the most positive is the sugar cane from Brazil — but that is thinking on a technical level. But this sugar cane is very generally harvested under slave or almost slave conditions. So, what's the point of this? To have a positive energy balance based on a human rights violation is illegitimate. I'd recommend you check further on the social and environmental questions, rather than just focusing on the energy balance.

s like from Cochrane Canada writes: The biofuel industry would shutdown tomorrow without government subsidies and nothing I've read so far justifies it's existence as an environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum. There are far more promising technologies that can survive without government subsidies and don't consume hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and don't require massive amounts of pollution causing inputs in order to get one gallon of biofuel. Are governments are throwing money at biofuels because they want to be seen to be doing something?

Ditdit Pelegrina: I agree. Corn ethanol production is a much more expensive, and less efficient, way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

The US Congressional Budget Office estimates that reducing gasoline consumption 10 percent through fuel economy standards would cost nearly $3.6 billion a year. Achieving the same result by expanding ethanol production would cost taxpayers at least $10 billion a year. Agrofuels are really the most expensive way to reduce emissions — and often they don't even do that!

Under optimistic projections, it costs some $500 in federal and state subsidies to reduce one metric ton of CO2-equivalent by making and using corn-based ethanol .That could purchase more than 30 metric tons of CO2-equivalent offsets on the European Climate Exchange, or nearly 140 metric tons on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The International Institute for Sustainable Development estimates that overall subsidies to ethanol and biodiesel are currently estimated at US$5.5-7.5 billion in the US alone.

Agrofuels are also inefficient users of water — which is likely to be an increasingly scarce and important resource as temperatures mount with climate change. To produce a litre of ethanol takes 3-5 litres of irrigation water and produces up to 13 liters of waste water. It takes the energy equivalent of 113 liters of natural gas to treat this waste, which will likely be released into the environment to pollute streams, rivers and groundwater.

In most of the governments in Asia, government officials are supporting investment in biofuel because they think they will earn a lot of money from it, personally and in terms of their business interests as well as for the country. Industry officials have helped convince them that it's the wave of the future, so government sees it as an opportunity, including for the oil industry which is investing in fertilizers and the petro-agro business. It's a fusion of capital around this so-called "environmental" opportunity. As Sukanto Tanoto, Indonesia's richest individual and owner of palm-oil said "Palm oil is like green gold now". There is a race to consolidate ownership over palm oil all over South Asia, with multinationals buying up plantations and processing plants across the region.What's missing here is the evidence of impacts on people. Via Campesina has pointed out that in Latin America, child labor and slavery from indigenous people is being used as a labour force in the suffocating process of cutting sugarcane and to prepare the land for the monoculture.

I think that governments are throwing money at this because industry is telling them it's good for the environment, for energy prices, and for agriculture. We're travelling across the country to say that it's bad for the environment, doesn't make economic sense, and is hurting small scale farmers and the poor in developing countries. The government of Canada just announced it was investing $619,117 in new biofuels projects in Port Lambton Lucan, Seaforth and Parkhill, ON. Judging the inefficiencies of biofuels on many fronts, I think there are better ways to support the family farm in Canada, and the planet.

Erin Hildebrandt from Canada writes: There needs to be some incentive for producers to plant food crops as opposed to biofuel crops. Producers, like any business person, will plant the crops that they feel have the highest return on investment that are suitable to their growing conditions. As a producer I like the option of growing crops that can also be used as biofuels (such as canola) because it means that lower quality canola can be used for biofuel production while higher quality crop will be put into food production. This raises the overall price of the crop because there is no longer excess in the market. In Canada we have enough production potential to service the need for food as well as the need for biofuels. I am tired of hearing about the increase in food prices in Canada, we spend a very low percentage of our earnings on food and food prices have not risen at the same rate as other commodities (eggs have been $2 since at least the 1980s). It's about time the cost of food went up in Canada. I realize that this is not the case for the developing world and indeed their situation is not comparible to Canada.

Javiera Rulli: Erin, I think that right now there's a perverse incentive for producers to grow food for biofuel crops. Without government subsidies and mandates, prices for biofuel crops wouldn't be so high. There's a distorted market for these crops. So we'd like the incentives to better reflect the costs of production and the real impact on the environment. Although I'm not Canadian and can't say exactly how prices have changed here, I can tell you that prices for bread have more than doubled in Pakistan, Egypt, and are exploding in Latin America. For families that already are spending as much as 40% of income on food, this means hunger.

I agree with you that the prices have been too low for farmers in recent years, even in Northern countries where farmers receive subsidies. The buyers, traders and retailers of grain have kept most of the profits, so farmers have been selling below cost of production, and the corporation has been winning. This subversion of the supply chain has led to a concentration of value in supermarkets, and in the pesticide and seed corporations. So today we see a situation where farmers are desperate to get a fair price, and they see biofuels as a way to do this. But biofuels are in the hands of the same agribusiness actors.

Ditdit Pelegrina: The price of rice has gone up very fast. The governments were not prepared. So there were no safety nets for consumers. It's good that the price is high for the farmers, but they don't want this to come at the expense of hunger for city dwellers. There's something wrong there. But I agree that farmers' prices need to increase at the farm-gate, more value at the first link of the food chain, and the buyers should have their profits narrow. The ones who are benefiting from increased prices from this crisis are even now the corporations, and not the farmers who are actually growing the food. There's a problem of governance of the value chain.

Javiera Rulli: In the public discussion about biofuels and food prices, the problem is that there is not enough discussion about the situation of agriculture today, from the farmers' perspective. This is a chance. The food crisis and climate change should be a first step towards revaluing farming as the main sector sustaining our society, and take steps to protect farmers, including and especially the farmers that produce food for local regions, and produce it in a climate, biodiversity and socially-friendly way.

Gary Blades from Halifax writes: What is the truth about the net energy balance of various bio-fuels? I have read conflicting reports. Some reports I read state that the net energy balance of corn ethanol is near zero. This means that if ethanol itself is used as fuel for making ethanol, then for each liter of ethanol used as input fuel to the ethanol making process, only one liter of ethanol is produced as output, which is uneconomic. What is the energy balance of corn ethanol and other bio-fuels ? Do they provide more energy than they take to produce? And if so, how much energy is produced over and above the input energy?

Ditdit Pelegrina: There are different accounts of the net energy balance of various agrofuels because different crops, in different places, use different kinds and amounts of energy in their production. For example, corn production in the US is very input-intensive: it uses fertilizers, lots of water, has high transport costs, etc. But small-scale agriculture for food in developing countries uses less energy, and when the products are consumed on the small farm, there's often little petrochemicals used. But accounts also vary because people are measuring different things, and using different assumptions.

The Cornell study we mentioned before, which was published in the academic journal Natural Resources Research, says that corn ethanol requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced. Many of the studies find a negative or zero net energy balance for ethanol, but sugar cane grown in Brazil according to some studies generates less emissions — if you ignore, of course, the impact on deforestation and peatland destruction. An evaluation of six different assessments of agrofuels, published in Science in January 2006, concludes that most ignore the strong climate change impacts of soil erosion, land conversion, nitrous oxide release, and feedback mechanisms resulting from deforestation.

It's interesting that the focus is mainly on energy balance. From our perspective, we focus primarily on community well-being, the social and environmental factors. Because there are people's lives, access to food, and human rights that are involved here. Can we incorporate this into an energy balance calculation.

Javiera Rulli: we are seeing that the expansion of monocultures for exports, now for biofuels, is leading to loss of land indigenous peoples and campesinos, and habitat for plant and animal species. This is not being taken into account into this mathematical energy balance. The change in life from being a family farmer, on his own land, to becoming an urban poor, depending on food aid programs and fossil fuel energy, living in miserable conditions…. This too has to be taken into account.

Imperial K from Toronto writes: I think biofuels are just an excuse to not do anything about the great relic..the car. Is it me, or is corporate Canada and perhaps worldwide, hell-bent on using up the cheapest available route first, and then and only then...after the oil is really depleted for the mass market in a few hundred years or less, they'll contemplate not using fossil fuels?

Ditdit Pelegrina: We agree very much you're your statement about biofuels being an excuse to not look at the car. Biofuels are actually a way to not look into the real problems, the world climate crisis. It's being presented as a solution, but it's just a new market. It's a fusion between the oil corporations, the car industry, and agribusiness. We need a response to the climate crisis that isn't just a new kind of consumption, a new market. The whole biofuel boom is just allowing governments, and international policymakers, to avoid the root causes of the crisis — the overconsumption patterns and globalized trade. Both open developing country citizens up to vulnerability, and reduce their resilience. The train is going too fast. We'd need four planets if everyone lived liked Canadians.

The rush to agrofuels is yet another example of the rush towards subsidized technological quick-fixes that don't get to the root of the problem, and can often make it worse. Well, I think the bottom line is we need to reduce our energy use.

Paul Sallmen from Burnaby, BC writes: From day one, I have been pretty sceptical of biofuels as a viable alternative to petroleum. I question the morality of diverting food from the dinner table to the gas tank! Even if a biofuel company says they don't use food, still, it takes land to grow all of this. If farmers can make more money growing crops for biofuel, then food crops will not be grown. I actually think the future is electric. As soon as a viable battery can be produced, the internal combustion engine will be on its way out. I hope a car like the Chevrolet Volt is a success. A plug-in Prius also can't be far behind. Not to mention, many other manufacturers have electric vehicles in the works.

Javiera Rulli: The whole society is fossil fuel based. Plastics, our food, everything — the energy challenge is total. Not just the car. It's important to remember that climate change is being caused not only by consumer energy use, but also by land use and agricultural practices — which account for more than 30% of annual greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Industrial processes, which let dirty smokestacks keep on going, are also an important factor. Transportation is a relatively small part of it. The message for consumers here is don't just focus on cars and airplanes. Ask about the manufacturing process, your food, and how it's being produced. The beginning of any solution to climate change has to start with putting a real cost on carbon emissions, that reflects its social and environmental cost. You can tax carbon and also set up cap-and-trade systems. Canada is way behind on this, and that's why it's not meeting its obligations under Kyoto. It's not just about paying for a quick fix via agrofuels to say something's being done.

What are the priorities for the future, in our new situation of food, climate and natural resource crisis? One of the presenters at the event in Saskatoon put it well. Here was his to-do list:
1. Reverse a rapid food-supply drawdown
2. Feed nearly 1 billion hungry people
3. Expand supply to cope with pop. growth—an additional North America every 6 years
4. Reverse the ocean fisheries collapse
5. Fix food system unsustainability
6. Proliferate the meat-based diet
7. Adapt food system to climate change
8. Deal with water supply constraints
9. Prepare for fossil fuel supply constraints
10. Cut greenhouse gas emissions
11. Stop habitat loss and massive extinction
12. Stabilize topsoil depletion and farmland loss
AND
13. Fuel the global auto fleet

And think that we need to do all this from a static cropland base! This list makes us understand that biofuels are not a priority. They are just a trap to obscure where we really stand as a species: look instead at the real issues, and the steps governments and citizens need to take. From this perspective, you can understand that many groups in the south are advocating for a moratorium on agrofuels. We can not tell the countries what to do, but we can demand that no more pressure be put on our lands and our population just to feed a new market.

John McGrath: The billions of dollars and effort being put into biofuels — what would happen if we were to do something else? What if we were to support farmers, that are helping the environment?

Ditdit Pelgrina: I would envision putting these investments into family farming, public research, public extension. Governments in our countries are so strapped for funds to put into rural areas. Money and effort needs to go to support resilient food and seed systems and farmers.

Javiera Rulli: A main problem is the concentration of people in the city without work in Latin America. We need to re-habilitate the countryside, through the rural non-farm sector along with ecological agriculture. This would be a way to reduce the violence and criminality that we're increasingly experiencing in the south.

John McGrath: Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for questions. Thank you very much Javiera and Ditdit, and thanks to our commenters for their questions. You can continue the discussion here.