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The European Union must overhaul its current bioenergy policy, which is based on getting fuel from plants, because the industry is linked to the eviction of thousands of people from their lands, out-competing food crops, and creating more not less pollution, says Oxfam in a new report.

Before the opening of the Committee on Food Security’s annual meeting in Rome (7 October), Oxfam called for Governments to ensure that biofuel policies do not force poor farmers off their land and fuel food price spikes.

The European Parliament’s compromise in capping the share of biofuels made from food crops at 6 per cent of the EU’s energy demand in transport by 2020 is disappointing, Oxfam said today.

The stance taken today by Members of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee on the reform of EU legislation on biofuels is disappointing, Oxfam said today. The Parliament’

This paper shows how concerns about land and food rights around the world, both major campaigning priorities for Oxfam, are closely linked to EU biofuel mandates.

Land used to power European cars with biofuels for one year could produce enough wheat and maize to feed 127 million people. With the world’s poorest at greater risk of hunger as a result of spiraling food prices, the EU must rethink its dangerous love affair with biofuels.

Responding to the

The UN’s Committee on World Food Security today showed that it is up to its role as the central body of the global governance on food security, agriculture and nutrition. However a number of governments showed that they are not yet ready to address the structural causes of the broken food system.

Oxfam today launches a major new report highlighting the growing pace of land deals brokered around the world, often to the peril of poor communities who lose their homes and livelihoods – sometimes violently – with no prior consultation, compensation or means of appeal.

The new wave of land deals is not the new investment in agriculture that millions had been waiting for. The poorest people are being hardest hit as competition for land intensifies.