Brasilia - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Wednesday insisted that the biofuel-versus-food debate was a function of increasing demand and poverty alleviation in developing countries - and not the result of competition for farmland by biofuel crops, as argued by some critics. "Don't come tell me that (food) is expensive because of biodiesel," he said.
"It is expensive because the world was not ready to see millions of Chinese eat, millions of Indians, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat three times a day," Lula said in a speech before the opening session of the 30th Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO.)
"Instead of crying," Lula said, the world should "produce more food."
Lula was defending the production of biofuels against charges that a rapid increase in production has competed with production of foodstuffs, resulting in soaring food prices.
Instead, he blamed the price increases on the alleviation of poverty and the growing ability of the world's poor to buy food. Lula said he was willing to travel the world in defence of biofuels.
Without explicitly mentioning the UN official, Lula referred to recent remarks by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler, and complained that "it is very easy for someone who is sitting in Switzerland to express his opinion on Brazil or on Africa."
In an interview with the French daily Liberation published Monday, Ziegler expressed great worry about the crisis triggered by the spiralling increase in the price of basic foodstuffs like rice and wheat.
The official warned that it is only the start of "a very long period of rioting, conflicts (and) waves of uncontrollable regional instability marked by the despair of the most vulnerable populations."
Both Egypt and more recently Haiti have experienced violent riots over rising food prices, and the Haitian parliament over the weekend even dismissed the government over the issue.
Ziegler blamed the crisis on "the indifference of the rulers of the world," and singled out the US support of bio-fuels for particularly harsh criticism.
Lula disagreed with this approach.
"It is important to come here and see how people live, and find out how much land we have and what is our potential for production. There are currently 1 billion human beings who are not eating with the necessary calories and proteins, and they do not have biodiesel," Lula noted.
Earlier Wednesday, Brazilian Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes stressed that "intelligent policies for the production of food and bio-fuels are perfectly compatible in Brazil."
"Brazil is the country where the production of a food surplus is growing most. We are the largest exporters of meat, coffee, sugar, juices, and the second-largest (producer) of grain crops," Stephanes countered.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said last week that climbing food prices would set back efforts to reduce poverty by about seven years.
Along with the United States, Brazil produces over 70 per cent of the world's ethanol, although the United States gets its variant from corn and Brazil uses more energy-efficient sugar cane. Last year the two countries signed an agreement to promote the production and use of biofuels around the world.
Last week, Brazilian authorities said that the consumption of ethanol in February was greater than that of petrol in Brazil, for the first time in two decades.
