Guzzle Grain, Go Hungry

The move to let damaged crops be used for fossil fuel production may hurt food availability, price

- Lola Nayar

A little over a decade ago, India’s first national biofuel policy categorically stated that ‘fuel vs. food security’ was not relevant in its context as “bio-ethanol is produced mainly from molasses, a byproduct of the sugar industry. In future too, it would be ensured that the next generation of technologies is based on non-food feedstocks”. On May 16, however, the Narendra Modiled cabinet, approved a new biofuel policy that “expands the scope of raw material for ethanol production by allowing use of sugarcane juice, sugar containing materials like sugar beet, sweet sorghum, starch containing materials like corn, cassava, damaged food grains like wheat, broken rice, rotten potatoes unfit for human consumption, for ethanol production.”

So, is the new policy a negation of the earlier assurance on the food-security versus-fuel debate?

This policy seeks to justify the switch by stating that “farmers are at a risk of not getting appropriate prices for their produce during the surplus production phase. Taking this into account, the policy allows the use of surplus food grains for production of ethanol for blending with petrol with the approval of the National Biofuel Coordination Committee.” Biofuels comprise fuels like ethanol, bio-diesel, green diesel, bio-jet fuels, etc. In India, ethanol is mostly produced by fermenting sugarcane molasses.  However, the cyclical nature of sugarcane production, the highs and lows of crop yields and the price offered for ethanol by oil companies have all resulted in slow progress in the blending plans.