MILAN (Reuters) - Bioenergy, accused by critics of sparking a food crisis last year, can increase living standards of rural people in poor countries when produced locally on a small scale, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday.
A joint study by United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Britain's Department for International Development analysed 15 start-up bioenergy projects in 12 developing countries and found none of them threatened food security.....
The study of small projects ranging from use of jatropha plants in Mali to animal waste biogas in Vietnam showed they eased access to energy in poor areas, created useful by-products such as cheap fertiliser from biogas production and helped make use of marginal land.
"In none of the cases studied did bioenergy production appear to jeopardise food security, either because the bioenergy is produced from crops not used for food or grown on very small plots or stretches of unused land," the Rome-based FAO, which has criticised industrial biofuels production, said in the statement.
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE5370H020090408
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
