ST. LOUIS ”“ Â If biofuels are to provide a mass amount of energy to a global population, there will need to be “quantum shifts” in existing governmental policies worldwide.
Those were the words of former three-term New Zealand Prime Minister James B. Bolger, who spoke during the first day of the 2007 World Agricultural Congress in St. Louis last week. The congress was sponsored by the World Agricultural Forum. Bolger is the chairman of the forum.
He said the world”™s population is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, up from the current 6 billion, and that will demand an ever-greater need to derive energy from the sun, wind, water and other alternative sources.
And as agriculture comes to the forefront of biofuel production, it will provide more opportunities for economic growth for farmers, especially those in developing countries, Bolger said.
“Agriculture is ”¦ the means by which we can advance opportunity and respect for the whole human family,” he said.
Also, Bolger said subsidies given to farmers in more prosperous countries, such as the United States and those of the European Union, make it difficult for farmers in developing countries to compete in global markets.
He called the world food trade, “the most distorted and unrefined of markets.”
“The world”™s patience is running out,” Bolger said. “Those outside looking in want fair trade right now.”
This is important to bioenergy because if poorer farmers can reap greater economic growth they can invest in and help produce biofuels. There are many crops that can potentially be used for biofuels that don”™t grow in abundance in the United States or the European Union, such as sugar cane.
He said the world at large is only “at an early stage of developing even a conceptual framework” to sustain the mass use of bioenergy.
Robert W. Lane, chairman and chief executive officer of Deere & Co., which, among other things produce the John Deere line of farm equipment, said almost 40 percent of the company”™s revenues come from outside the United States.
“So we grapple with these issues every day,” he said. “We have over $1 billion invested throughout the world in agricultural development in rural areas.”
Some of these investments include new kinds of machines to more efficiently process ethanol, to investments in developing ways to process different forms of bioenergy.
Lane said the one aspect missing in all of this is the political resolve in FirstWworld countries to reduce subsidies and encourage true free trade.
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“We need (policymakers) in order to vitalize agriculture as a powerful engine for faster and sustainable economic development.”
Bolger said reducing subsidies in countries like the U.S. wouldn”™t be a simple case of hurting the American farmer to help a farmer in another country compete in the global markets.
For example, he said, with fewer subsidies would come less governmental regulation.
“I would like to see the developed world get rid of subsidies,” he said. “However, there should be some balance, there needs to be some (governmental) regulations,” on agriculture, such as environmental regulations.
Lane called the current period of time, “a truly unique period” for agriculture.
He said sustainable economic development for farmers in developing countries would mean “improved diets, incomes, and living standards across vast regions of the world.”
“With open markets, transparent systems, and the free flow of capital we can meet our goal, we cannot meet our goal with the existing constraints.”
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Staff writer Bryan F. Yurcan covered the 2007 World Agricultural Congress in St. Louis last week.
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