June 26, 2008

Millions of people poorer due to bio fuels

At first bio fuel may have seemed a great idea, but now that the scale of the industry is becoming more apparent, there are fears that the hunger for fuel to put into cars is driving the bio fuel industry to expand.

But this expansion of crops for bio fuels means that the traditional crops are being discarded in favour of the more valuable bio fuel crops, which are given subsides and tax breaks making the temptation to stop growing their normal crops.

This move has been blamed for the huge rises in food costs, as these are becoming less available to a wide market, making this much more expensive. The charity Oxfam believes that around thirty million people are affectively poorer because of bio fuels.

Source [BBC]