Bioenergy and Food Security Project 

Mainstreaming Food Security Concerns into Bioenergy Assessments

The main objective of the Bioenergy and Food Security (BEFS) Project is to ensure that food security concerns are taken into account within the bioenergy sector. BEFS supports sound decision making that is both sustainable and beneficial to rural populations in the long term.

Bioenergy risks to food security

More than 960 million people in the world are suffering from chronic hunger. Seventy percent of these live in rural areas and are for the most part dependent on agriculture. Most of the poor in the world spend a large part of their income on food and are therefore greatly affected by increases in food prices. Land appropriation for large-scale energy crop plantations, monocropping and excessive water use are just some of the additional risks for natural resources that can affect the livelihoods of the poor. Will bioenergy development worsen food security or will new investments for bioenergy bring benefits to the poor?

The risks that bioenergy may have for food security include:

• increased competition with current food production and natural resources;
• price surges and increased price volatility;
• other impacts on livelihoods such as hindered access to land or water.

However, bioenergy can bring opportunities that:

• drive forward rural development through increased energy access, fossil fuel substitution, employment and income; 
• increase harvests for both food and fuel crops through bioenergy investment.

BEFS supporting sound decision making

BEFS provides decision makers with a wide-ranging approach, which uses expert knowledge (from many countries and different groups) and a carefully chosen set of analytical tools, to answer key questions in bioenergy development such as:

• Where and how can crop production be increased sustainably?
• How much will it cost to convert the crop into bioenergy?
• What are the food and fuel demand projections over the next ten years?
• How will income and employment be affected by bioenergy development?
• What are the impacts on different population groups, in particular the poorest and most vulnerable?

The BEFS approach to assessing the risks and opportunities of bioenergy on food security has been developed in close collaboration with country-based teams to ensure that the assessment can be easily repeated in many other countries.

BEFS homes in on the links between bioenergy and food security. There are four dimensions to food security: availability (food production), access (livelihoods, incomes and prices), utilization (nutritional intake) and stability (price stability and volatility). Due to the importance of the link to bioenergy, the complexity of the matter at hand and the amount of analysis required, BEFS focuses on the dimensions of food availability and access.

BEFS constitutes one pillar of FAO’s work towards safeguarding food security concerns in the emerging bioenergy sector. BEFS is closely linked with the Bioenergy and Food Security Criteria and Indicators (BEFSCI) project which aims to develop detailed principles, criteria and indicators on sustainable bioenergy production that safeguards food security.