What is the Soil Association's position on biofuels?

The Soil Association supports the growing of small-scale ‘biomass’ crops for particular uses. These low carbon, renewable sources of energy include:

• local heating
• waste timber
• farm wastes for anaerobic digestion
• waste cooking oil for fuel.

We recognise, however, that there are important concerns about the development of ‘biofuels’ that provide transport fuel from large-scale crop production. If sufficient research demonstrates that such biofuels really deliver net environmental benefits then their development is acceptable. However, because of the very limited potential for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from domestically-produced biofuels, and the current and potential future environmental and social damage of large-scale biofuel cropping in developing countries, we believe Government policies would achieve far greater greenhouse gas reductions at less cost by investing in other options, like organic farming.

We are also concerned about the potential impacts of the biofuels market on the food security of some developing countries. We believe that a general move to organic farming and local food economies will deliver far greater benefits for tackling climate change, as well as improving food security, farmer incomes, and adaptation to climate change, than the widespread cultivation of biofuel crops.

We would therefore only support the use of biofuels from large-scale cropping if they are subject to stringent mandatory environment and social standards and safeguards, and produce minimum significant net greenhouse gas reductions over fossil fuels. These standards must be based on an assessment of the amount of energy used to create biofuels and independent certification of the impacts of the whole production and processing system (including transport and land use change). The use of GM plant varieties must be prohibited.