Britain’s farmers have an opportunity to move from a subsidy-based sector into a successful market-driven one by growing crops for biofuels, according to industry leaders. But the UK is already falling behind the US, Germany and France in the green fuels market. Paul Temple, vice president of the National Farmers’ Union, dismissed suggestions that a move to satisfy cleaner transport needs was driving up food prices as “absolute nonsense” put about by food processors and said biofuels provided benefits for town and country. “This is a big win for both urban and rural economies because we already produce significant exportable surpluses at the bottom end of the market,” said Mr Temple. “Biofuels offer farmers the chance to move out of the subsidised economy to the market economy but the UK has been slow out of the blocks compared with Germany, France and America.” Britain needs to move faster to catch up with the US, which is producing “tens of million of tonnes” of energy crops and gaining valuable experience on how to be more efficient in production methods and processing, the NFU explains. The need to tackle global warming by moving away from carbon-based fuels such as oil and natural gas has led to a raft of government initiatives around Europe that require cars and trucks to obtain 5% of their fuel from crop-based sources such as bioethanol and biodiesel by 2010. Europe produced 268m tonnes of cereals last year, of which only 3.5m tonnes were used for bioethanol, and the target for 2007 is to produce 5m tonnes for green fuel. But even with ambitious plans for further growth it is impossible to imagine biofuel distorting food prices, argues the NFU – at least in the near term.”Food processors have been complaining about the price of supplies but its absolute nonsense to blame rising prices on biofuels – it’s a result of the bad weather and other issues,” said Mr Temple. “We speak to the food processors and have told them it’s a problem with retailers not the supply base.” He points out that only 7p to 10p on the price of a loaf comes from the wheat in the bread. The rest is made up of energy, transport and labour. There has been a spate of warnings about the impact of a big shift to growing crops for energy. The global rush to switch from oil to energy derived from plants would drive deforestation, push small farmers off the land and lead to serious food shortages and increased poverty unless carefully managed, said the most comprehensive survey yet completed of energy crops, published last week. The United Nations report, compiled by all 30 of the world organisation’s agencies, points to crops like palm oil, maize, sugar cane, soya and jatropha. Rich countries want to see these extensively grown for fuel as a way to reduce their own emissions. Their production could help stabilise the price of oil and open up new markets but could lead to higher commodity prices for the poor, said the report. Farmers in Britain are already trying to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions while preparing for warmer and wetter winters plus more extreme weather events such as flooding. The warming of the British Isles has led to new initiatives by farmers, such as experiments with growing olives and other crops previously associated with countries bordering the Mediterranean.

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