Canadian wheat and the biofuels lobby

While the world is potentially on the cusp of a new “green revolution”, Canadians should be weary of our government’s supposedly “green” policies.

Bill C-33, an act to amend the 1999 Environmental Protection act to require mandatory 5% biofuel content in diesel, for example, was given royal assent last year. In proposing the bill, the Conservative government claimed the measure would “reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by about 4 megatonnes per year, the GHG equivalent of taking almost one million vehicles from the road”. These are some very optimistic numbers prepared out of somewhere by then-Environment Minister John Baird. Not only that, but it is supposed to assist a transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources and help “farmers” by opening new markets.

Baird’s optimism is largely unfounded. By mandating costly biofuels for inclusion, the government is creating an automatic market for a product that is unable to prove its own sustainability or cost-effectiveness.

First of all, the biofuel market will likely squeeze further the disappearing family farm, not save it. When the Conservative government talks about “farmers”, they mean incorporated farm operations that happen to be owned by people who have families (all people have families, right?), rather than family-run small operations. Not only that, but the sheer scale of biofuel production would require large-scale industrial production, which is antithetical to small-scale, sustainable family farming.

In addition to that, small-scale production is largely protected by the Canadian Wheat Board, which has a monopoly on prairie grain marketing, a longtime enemy and target of the Harper government. The Canadian Wheat Board ensures (arguably) that prairie producers receive the top price for their product and it also regulates the quality of Wheat sold for export. Canadian export wheat is in high demand internationally for its high-quality wheat.

In that sense, Canada could be a potential bio-fuel source to feed America’s energy appetite to come. However, the high price of wheat exports, and the fact that the CWB has a monopoly and sets the quality of exports prevents this from becoming a viable reality. The wheat is too expensive, and the produces varieties contain levels of starch that are too low to make an efficient fuel. American biotech companies have been developing high-starch strains of genetically engineered/modified wheat suitable for biofuels as well.

The fact that the Conservative government wishes to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board, combined with the fact that they are visibly supporting an industry that is both economically unsound and environmentally questionable suggests that there are interests beyond those two factors at stake. Briarpatch magazine comes up with a good explanation for the Harper government’s wholehearted embrace of biofuels:

This wholehearted embrace of the agrofuel industry by the Canadian government comes largely thanks to the work of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (CRFA), the leading national lobby group for agrofuels. Its strategy, Climate Change Solution: Made in Canada, became the blueprint for the Harper government’s agrofuel program. When Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz opened debate on Second Reading of Bill C-33, he said: “It is very apropos to have this bill before us today. Many of us enjoyed the camaraderie at the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association event last night in room 200, and everyone had a great time. It is a tremendous organization. This bill is the genesis of a lot of work it has done with the government to build the biofuels industry in Canada.” Just days after Bill C-33 was passed by the Senate on June 26, Stephen Harper appointed the CFRA’s former executive director, Kory Teneycke, as his Director of Communications.

It is quite clear that the Conservative government is highly intertwined with agrifuel industry and wishes to open markets for large producers and fuel companies who see it as an opportunity to feed American energy needs, as well as opening up the Canadian market for GMO seeds. This would in turn allow less land to produce more biofuel products for export, virtually handing the ethanol lobby an economic slow-ball to hit out of the park.

This isn’t just an economic issue, either. Large scale production of biofuels has been largely discredited as a potent green-house gas reducer. Not only that, the United Nations condemned the European Union and United States for taking a “criminal path” toward a global food crisis by encouraging the production of biofuels. Most forms of biofuels (production+processing+burning) produce as much as or more per mega joule than gasoline, making it a marginal climate change-friendly alternative. The major problem, of course, is the fact that biofuels will simply transfer too much food producing land to fuel producing land to make any dent in the use of fossil fuels. It is estimated that it would take 60% of land devoted to soy production in the United States to produce 5% of America’s fossil fuel energy needs. Biofuels are not the answer to green production, nor are they the answer to future energy needs.

Since the Conservative government isn’t subsidizing ethanol with a mandatory quote for any logical reasons–economic or environmental–it’s quite clear that they are doing so for either the sake of green publicity or the sake of special interests like the American energy lobby. Or both. What they aren’t doing it for is the interest of Canadians, our ecology or the Canadian food system.

Photo of grain elevator, Duval SK, courtesy Jordon Cooper under a CC license

Tagged as: agri-business, agriculture, American Empire, bio-fuels, Conservatives, Energy and Transportation, ethanol, issues, Stephen Harper, wheat, wheat board