Diverting sugar and corn crops to biofuels could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, according to the UN's frontman on the "right to food" issue.
Jean Ziegler said, "There is a great danger for the right to food by the development of biofuels. It (the price) will be paid perhaps by hundreds of thousands of people who will die from hunger."
From Reuters:
"Ziegler said more and more sugar cane plantations in northern and eastern Brazil were being used for biofuels, leaving less land for subsistence farmers.
"Brazil is the world's biggest producer of cane-based fuel ethanol, most of which is destined for the domestic market to meet rapidly growing demand from flex-fuel motorists.
"In some regions of Mexico, the price of maize rose by 16 percent last year, because of rising demand for use in biofuels, according to the independent U.N. envoy.
"'I can understand the Brazilian and Mexican policies which as very indebted countries want to earn hard currency .... But from the point of view of the right to food, which must be the decisive one, it is a catastrophe,' Ziegler said.
"Some 854 million people worldwide -- or one in six -- suffer from hunger, according to the sociologist and former Swiss parliamentarian, who cited U.N. figures."
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