* Increases oil, reduce grain and soybeans

* The union leaders say Meta

* Biofuels and TLC

* Analyze the business strictly for agrofuels

* And what is the future

Introduction

Biofuels have been given special attention to the extent that food crops like corn or sugar cane are used to feed the growing thirst for cars and trucks on alternative fuels.

Is criticized because products such as ethanol increased cultivation of their input carries the high price of land, displace other crops and deforestation sics. Two major producers of palm, Indonesia and Malaysia plan to spend nearly half their crop to produce biodiesel and oil not for human consumption. With 200 kilos of maize produced 50 liters of fuel, or feed a person for one year. United States and other nations to stimulate their planting outrageous subsidies to produce ethanol. It also questions the fact that it invests almost as much energy to turn corn into a gallon of ethanol which yields the measure of this fuel, thus the effect on global warming is virtually nil. A cane, more efficient, it is responsible for most deforestation in the Amazon. It’s not just corn, sorghum, cassava and soybeans are among the projects for increasing production of biofuels.

Food security and environmental preservation, which tend to neglect biofuel enthusiasts-are critical, but there are those who argue that the production of fuels from renewable resources is an alternative to oil and contribute to the development of poor countries that have good prices for their primary products and the opportunity to modernize their agricultural structures.

The important thing is to make the debate with all the variables. In the department of Meta, this does not start, and although she has not begun a shift from food production for human consumption to fuel the plant input, and there is a tendency to crop expansion and investment in that area. The agricultural frontier and the palm sugar has grown especially in the flat Altillanura. In maize and oilseeds, the country has a deficit (in the target area decreases) and must be imported. But sooner or later, the issue should be discussed seriously. And, as shown by the rest of the world will not be easy to promote the expansion of sustainable production of biofuels and ensure, at a time, which covers food supply of the Colombian diet.

The text of the document claims, are the sole responsibility of the author. Neither the publisher nor the printer, have no responsibility for what is written in the document.

Oil increases, lower grain and soybean

In our department the model predator in the agricultural sector began to feel from the 90′s “the land that produced sorghum, cotton, rice, livestock became the first opening, designed by Gaviria-Hommes. A” conversion ” which strengthened the already powerful Federation of Livestock. But when the news of the oil crisis and biofuels popularized jumped on stage, the cows gave place to the palms.

“Back there, of course, a difficult and bloody malquerientes cleaning work progress, and the paramilitaries were hired to” secure “areas and defend the new investments. The conversion did not stop there: driving and went on and expropriate those resisted the future. Five million acres were taken over by drug traffickers. The new patterns that were washing their dollars with soil, then put their land to produce palm (Alfredo Molano Bravo, April 11.) After the chainsaw, which served Scriptures as much to do to knock stubble and mountains, came the nominees, the tinterillos, lawyers, notaries, mayors, senators, surveyors, engineers and agronomists, all to make our country: to leave the ground level, treeless, logs, cross roads and drainage channels and, above all, no people. It seemed as if all landowners have given them to build airports. ”

All this happened without the government departments, agricultural leaders and the regional academy, react in favor of the neediest citizens who promised and swore to defend, on the contrary remained a cloak of wickedness.

The World Bank acknowledged in its “review” of Colombia in October 2007 that “poverty remains one of the main challenges facing the country, together with inequality, which is one of the highest in Latin America: Colombians 20% higher on the scale of resources receive 60% of national income. ” This data is complemented by the poorest 20%, meanwhile, receives less than 3% and up to 40% lower in the scale can not even 10% of the wealth created.The distribution of ownership is extremely illogical. According to the rural land register (IGAC, 2004) 0.06% of the owners, those with more than 2,000 acres, has 53.5% of the earth, in the meantime, 83%, with holdings of less than 15 hectares, comprises only 7.2%. The Gini coefficient, used to measure inequality, which is a number between 0 and 1, where 1 corresponds to perfect inequality, 0.91 mark when it comes to distribution of the rural area and 0.81 when it comes to value agricultural land (Uniandes, 2005).

In the financial sector something amazing happens. Seven banks and a leasing company with 65% of financial assets. (World Bank, Asobancaria, 2007) of 118 companies listed on the stock market, which in 2005 were worth $ 87 billion, the 20 largest shareholders control 80% of stock (CID National University, 2005). The country’s largest bank announced that in 2007 won a billion dollars, which means more than a million dollars a day, twice in 2005. The financial system, banks, corporations, funds and insurance companies, 10.5 trillion won together and, as GDP grew slightly more than $ 21 billion, raised one of every two dollars added.

Loan concentration is very high. Twelve thousand small and medium enterprises, which generate nearly 45% of employment (Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira, 2007), hardly get 20% of commercial credit and said that restrictions on access to loans is the primary obstacle to its development . In agriculture is worse. In 2007, nearly 2.5 million small business owners, barely 138,597 agreed to a loan with an average amount of $ 4.5 million. Meanwhile, the so-called “other producers” were 36,143, received about 70 million each, capturing 80% of total resources prepared for the sector. (Minagricultura, 2008). Also, “support for subsidized interest rates for exporters” were distributed in 2006 as asymmetrically as any. A single dairy firm favored him with $ 1,310 million, and the sugar industry, an oligopoly, 36 operations is subsidized by $ 5,511 million, at $ 153 million each.

It’s proven plutocratic nature of the Uribe government, where “there are unbalanced influence in making decisions in favor of those who have the sources of wealth” is a system akin to neo-liberalism and that is in vogue even in the United States. It has been reported beyond the Working Group on Electoral Democracy: “Money is the major determinant of influence and political success … determines the parameters of public debate: what issues are put on the table, under what appear, and how to design legislation. ” The result is the same in every latitude: inequality is becoming more unequal.

Against this background, department of Meta, the airlines engaged in oil palm cultivation continue to expand, displacing crops at other times for metenses produced food such as rice, soybeans, corn and other species of food crops ( bananas, cacao, cassava, papaya). “The rain, the few left standing, are being killed, and food crops themselves cornered. The ultimate goal is to lower fuel costs by paying a very high environmental and social price because the new economy also enter into a crisis wave of oversupply is now made with so much violence and irresponsibility “(The Spectator 11 April Alfredo Molano Bravo).

Based on national policies, successive governments in the Meta have developed strategies to comply with imperial designs, regardless of the fate and the power of thousands of metenses, losing the department in 2004-2006, 45,270 hectares under grains (rice, corn, and soybeans) to be devoted in particular to oil palm (17 106 hectares in this period) and pasture, thereby further praderizacion Meta.

In the case of rice loss in acres harvested, according to reports Fedearroz and Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development Goal, is seen below and reach the 35,112 hectares between 2004 and 2006, while palm expansion between 2001 and 2006 is 32,032 hectares vocation especially in cities with livestock.

“The water course was changed to dry lowlands, and thus might be appropriate and added to the giant balloons properly grounded grids with rows of palm. Neighbors small palms sold or selling, the big ones, were associated. Or sold. In the overnight-that is, from 2000 – the palm took the best land in hot spots and began beating the cows and farmers marry “(El Espectador, April 11 Alfredo Molano Bravo).

Municipalities such as San Martin, Castilla la Nueva and San Carlos de Guaroa were disappearing from their environment the corn and soybean crops to make way for oil palm farming in high-precision, absentee farmers and high capital investment, while increases poverty and displacement in one of them.

Meta union leaders say

Jaime Casasfranco, international consultant, believes that “the country is not affected by food shortages because domestic production is sufficient, however, the high food import volumes in 2007, to the contrary.

He adds that “it is necessary to clarify that the biofuels production in Colombia does not affect food production because it articulates the policy of food security and seed new areas of raw materials for biodiesel and alcohol fuel set out in the target year of 2020, representing only 2.6% of the land used in agriculture “(Llanos seven days, May 2, 2008).

With regard to the potential for food shortages due to the allocation of land to produce raw materials for fuels, the Secretary of Agriculture of Meta, Javier Anibal Rojas said that “these lands are new and used varieties of corn, sugar cane and cassava are not used for human consumption. ”

And although the Secretary of Agriculture Meta acknowledged that the area of rice has been declining to make way for palm oil (used to produce biodiesel), did not specify the number of acres that have switched from rice to palm.

“Colombia at the moment is shielded against the food crisis because we are rural vocation, the vast majority are farmers and produce all kinds of food due to temperature variations and floors that are in the region,” said Secretary of Agriculture Meta, Javier Anibal Rojas.

As for the allocation of land to grow raw material to serve in the production of biofuels, Rafael Mejia Lopez, president of the Agricultural Society of Colombia (SAC), said: “Those lands in the target were destined for the livestock and not for food production.

“Overall the new crops to produce fuel ethanol or biodiesel, have not been removed lying jungle or production area for rice or other food,” said union leader.

“That is what is called the readjustment of the agricultural sector,” said Mejia Lopez. “We have some Llanos in those who have not done many works. The railway infrastructure does not exist, airports generally do not exist, the river network and the ports of loading and unloading do not exist. Until this is better to open a market towards the interior and exterior, will slow the development of the Plains, “said the chairman of the SAC.

For representatives of Fedepalma Fedearroz, SAC, and Agameta, the department has enough land to diversify the planting of foodstuffs.

“Large tracts of land with the goal counts and the Eastern Plains are currently the best letter that has this region to ensure food security.

This was explained by the agrarian leader Alvaro Orjuela Villalobos, a member of the Association of Farmers and Ranchers of Meta (Agameta) noted “that the current situation is a great opportunity to grow because there is land without having to cut down a forest Underground” .

The same thought Fedepalma President, Jens Mesa Dishington, who said that if anything left over in this region of the Llanos Orientales is land available for planting, while warning that must be evaluated is how it is making use of the different areas .

“The Eastern Plains have to work on improving logistics, or through alternative cart or through the navigability of the Meta River to get from a cheaper way to sea,” said manager Rafael Hernandez Lozano gremial.Seg’un, manager of Fedearroz, Colombia and the Llano must prepare for increased demand there will be food. “The way that Colombia has to face the problem of food shortages in an efficient and competitive irrigated land is suitable for either a higher productivity in rice, corn, soy or any crop that is a source of food for population. “Rafael Mejia Lopez, president of the SAC, agreed in stating that” the goal and the Eastern Plains have enough land to grow food, but said the future of agriculture in the region depends on the transport infrastructure, in view, is very bad. ”

Biofuels and TLC

The only product in which Colombia could sweep the Yankees in the FTA negotiation is called sugar. The sweep could, and Colombia could sell more sugar in half a million tons or more. Well, what is the only product in the industry and all the national agro never have zero percent tariffs on NAFTA It’s called sugar. The only thing we could beat them, the spirits of the national government of Colombia were submitted to the Americans and there shall be no tariff on sugar. Soy also is very bad bargain. The FTA will disappear little soy is in Colombia and there will be serious losses in oil and palm oil. Large losses in oils are carefully documented by studies carried out and with precise figures. They will be replaced by imports of soybeans and canola and other products imported from the United States. And then we say yes, that will be lost, but the solution is agrodiesel.

Let us look then the other side of the story. There will be export of agrofuels For here all the time it has moved with the suggestion that there will be large exports of biofuels. Prices look to see if it is true that there will be exports of biofuels. The only biofuel that can be produced in Colombia are going to market on the basis of huge subsidies from the Colombian state. There will be exports of biofuels Hopefully. I have nothing against biofuels that are exported, but what happens is I can not believe in these wonders because the figures do not add up.

I’ll give you some figures: Conpes document of this government. Look what it says: costs to Colombia 92% ethanol are higher than in Brazil. Is too big. Conpes says. How are you going to overcome this inequality Conpes also says that palm oil costs, not agri-diesel, oil, those in Colombia are 37% higher compared to Malaysia and 110% compared to those of Indonesia. The Ministry of Agriculture gives figures which I quote: Colombia, ethanol, data from the Ministry, from 1.78 to 2.09 dollars per gallon, Brazil 1.26, U.S. 1.77, but we are negotiating to 1 , $ 50 / gallon. Agrodiesel: Colombia between 1.97 and $ 2.03 per gallon, Brazil $ 1.36 per gallon. But there are other elements. President Bush came to Latin America to find businesses and agri-diesel fuel alcohol and did not go through Colombia. No. He went to Brazil. Everyone knows the power setting that is Brazil, among other things because they have land to spare, poverty wages and huge subsidies for all levels of government. The competitiveness of Indonesians and Malays in this business is all palm. New competitive positions are emerging, such as associations of large investors around the world and Brazil to plant this type of goods in Africa. Rather, if labor is not worth anything in Malaysia, Africa will go up or down are not wages, but the blows that are given to workers. Adding to the land are absolutely new.

It not then we end up importing ethanol and agrodiesel to Colombia, because the laws that Congress approved most left open the door for these grants are given to imported fuels. Unprecedented. In Codazzi producing alcohol from maize were imported, but it happened that the spike in corn prices had to go out of business and are on something else. With corn imported or smuggled, whatever, but foreign corn, because this is what ultimately matters is whether domestic or imported. This part of the discourse of government is that these things are going to do to revive the national agriculture and corn imported or smuggled not stimulate the national agriculture.

On 14 March the National Biofuels Federation sent a letter to the Director of National Planning on the draft document Conpes we are talking about. Look what they say: “The document Conpes pivot offsets policy is currently focused on domestic consumption to one that aims to guide the business towards exports.” And the letter is to protest the document Conpes. The Federation asked the government not going to approve this document because it will strip the business. And he throws it, says the Federation, want to pass them to produce for the domestic market to produce for export. It is obvious that if you spend to produce for export, if the conditions are pushing in that direction, they end up bankrupt because they can not compete. Say in the same letter that they do not change the rules of the game to investors who trusted that their business was the growth in domestic consumption of biofuels. That being said those in the business, or are recognizing that they are competitive. Suddenly say eventually they did, but for now (Agrofuels increase hunger of mankind. Jorge Enrique Robledo April 1, 2008).

Rigorous analysis of the biofuel business

An analysis on biofuels, struck by the silence or low emphasis on parts of a business-to only refer to this aspect, which they say could be expanded from 129 hectares to between three and seven million hectares of raw material produce biodiesel and ethanol.

First, the huge cost differences between countries like Colombia and Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia, imposed reality today, and so Colombian growers themselves recognize that the country lacks any possibility to export and as an option only has the domestic market Colombia.

Second, domestic consumption of biofuels involves huge transfers from the state, the order of $ 220 million annually for the current mix ethanol with gasoline to 10%, it would have to add an amount equal to or greater than agrodiesel mixed with the diesel fuel is 5 percent, for a total of $ 400 million a year, without doubt an enormous sum.

Third: what percentage is to bring biofuels blends with gasoline and diesel to absorb the increase in the acreage that is being discussed, which increase between 2,300 and 5,400 percent of the planted area Will cost the treasury much those higher rates If that’s convenient or even possible Whether to accept that the government use the numbers it wants, without examining

Fourth: If you must encrypt the “future” of the national agro business in which the country is not competitive internationally, with sales in the domestic market tied to large subsidies from the state, whose future depends on what happens with international prices oil and technological changes in its industrial phase and which also could end up importing Colombia Irrelevant that the President of Fedepalma ask “caution” (Portfolio, April 0, 2008).

We believe that there is too much to ask that this issue rigorously analyze the government’s accounts and promote a serious debate about what’s best for Colombia.

And what is the future

Greed with the needy and generosity with the powerful, including consortia, financial and rentier, either domestic or foreign, as well as those who, under the Statute, to legalize many acres coming from the plunder, introduces not only a system of using land as “potential” that the neoliberal government of President Uribe set as a derivation of the FTA and imperial rule, but that it generates a new “fix” social in the Colombian countryside. What is the future of the nearly 25 million annual wages, involved in the production of cotton, grains and beans left to their fate How is amended in the new framework the iniquitous regime prevailing rural property which 0.4% of the owners had about 65% of the land How to keep farm production and food business that are excluded from the benefits of the policy and that provides more than half of the Colombian subsistence and as a consequence of this policy will be less regressive

It is clear that agricultural policy harms food sovereignty. But with the delivery of public lands to companies, including foreign, can be configured to undermine the territorial sovereignty, it becomes really what President Uribe cataloged in a given time as a pipe dream of those opposed to NAFTA. A wrong way, they plot the expulsion of new layers of farmers, peasants and rural workers, expand the kinds of late planting performance while worsening the national food supply per capita and increases the country’s food dependence, among both grows the dramatic situation of misery and ruin rural communities, including indigenous and Afro-Colombians, whom the Minister Arias, calls “the largest landowners in the country.”

The shift is not neutral government. It serves certain classes and interests: “The vision of rural development and land policy which underpin this proposal is part of the new realities of the national economy, characterized by accelerated process of trade liberalization, internationalization Colombia’s economy and the world, that require a new impetus to business development and the central role of private initiative … the peasant economy, more than any other, requires a radical adjustment in state policies designed “(Statement of Reasons , Bill Status of Rural Development). To survive in the new institutional, territorial, and social production is being structured, entrepreneurs, peasants, Afro-Colombian, indigenous and laborers, not expelled, they will be forced into a new servitude to those who attract more income from reaffirmation of the agro-export model of the most iniquitous land distribution and its “use”, starting with those who control the commercial links and profit from the vile trade in tropical commodities commodities, production and processing of them based on cheap labor and low purchase prices for agricultural producers, and the ownership of genetic resources, biodiversity, water and land, thus meeting a huge need for imperial and easy access reduced to natural resources.

In the past 16 months, international rice prices rose 135 percent, wheat by 116 percent, soy 93 percent and corn 41 percent, increases that also affect Colombia, as evidenced by rising inflation and the disappearance of bread two hundred pesos. The weakness of the country before the ambush comes from agricultural imports exceed eight million tonnes, an increase of two million in the government of President Alvaro Uribe, and that, according to FAO, and by 2002 51 percent of protein and calories and 33 percent of vegetable fats consumed came from Colombians abroad.

The reasons for this shortage are well known: increases in consumption in some areas, incentives for biofuels, which compete put food in poor nations to the rich gas, concentration of agricultural production in some countries and reduce or eliminate in others, the greater power of transnational trade in food, revaluation of the peso, rising oil and chemicals become commodities and agricultural goods, ie an object of speculation by financial sharks, all of which neoliberal globalization may be called “free trade” savage capitalism.

Also notable is important to know that countries like Brazil, Thailand, Argentina, Vietnam, India and Egypt limited their food exports to ensure their domestic supply only obvious decision and again makes a mockery of those who speak of a world trade markets perfect, which only exist in textbooks and used here apologists of “free trade” to present his theories as impositions from Washington to import the staple diet of the Colombian people. And it is clear that the concept of food security, which sets the strategic value for a nation to produce food in their territory, lest his people starve and lose sovereignty, far from having expired, is being confirmed by the facts .

In the midst of discussions of NAFTA when it was explained that the United States would maintain huge agricultural subsidies required to do so because their food security and Colombia should use the same concept to refuse to check out its agricultural, Jorge Humberto Botero, the minister led the “negotiation”, he explained that would not take that view because it was irrelevant whether the food is imported from Colombia (The Republic, April 21, 2004) and was able to add: “A thousand and a thousand thanks for the subsidies ( foreign agricultural) because we allow, for example, buy cheap wheat “(The Nation, May 16, 2004). For its part, can not forget Andres Felipe Arias explained, the convenience of buying grain abroad to replace production for exports hypothetical gooseberries.

Despite the rise of food confirms the disastrous agrarian conception of the Colombian government, which has not generated worst effects because the FTA has not entered into force, now Minister of Agriculture came to say Colombia is “armored” against the global food crisis, as if the figures show otherwise. It is a mockery forcing the Colombians to eat foreign food and then claim that they are “armored” against its costs It is not an analytical fraud put in the same basket meat, eggs, grains, cereals and oilseeds with tubers, fruits and vegetables, whose nutritional value is lower-calorie, carbohydrates and proteins, “to” test “against all evidence, that nothing happens here

The cunning of Andres Felipe Arias of poor Colombians can replace more expensive foods to less costly recalls Marie Antoinette, queen of France, who, over the protests of the people for lack of bread, asked: “And why not eat cakes “. But in this case is reversed, because the replacement would be to lower quality food. Change the minister and his bread in the celeriac and rice for the squash (Jorge Enrique Robledo Castillo, Famine and “free trade”).

The cunning of Andres Felipe Arias of poor Colombians can replace more expensive foods to less costly recalls Marie Antoinette, queen of France, who, over the protests of the people for lack of bread, asked: “And why not eat cakes “. But in this case is reversed, because the replacement would be to lower quality food. Change the minister and his bread in the celeriac and rice for the squash

Jorge Enrique Robledo Castillo, “Famine and free trade”