Biofuel has become a politically polarizing issue, and political insiders and industry proponents say it’s not by happenstance.
A story in Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., says the public flogging the biofuel industry has received in recent weeks is part of a “concerted effort spearheaded by the Grocery Manufacturers Association.”
The grocery lobby reportedly hired a public relations firm that promised to build “a global centre-left coalition” including environmental, hunger, food aid, poverty, development, farm organization and labour groups to deliver the message that the biofuel industry is responsible for rising food costs contributing to world hunger and poverty.
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Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuel Association, said it does seem that most of the criticism his industry faces stems from groups occupying the left side of the political spectrum.
He said biofuel has unfairly become entangled in the anti-agribusiness, anti-trade agendas of organizations such as Oxfam, USC Canada and the National Farmers Union.
“In political terms, when you look at some of those organizations, it’s clear that they’re left of the spectrum.”
NFU president Stewart Wells rejected the accusation that groups voicing their concerns about food security are driven by politics.
“I think it would be really ridiculous and a major red herring if somebody tried to present this as a right versus left issue on a political spectrum.”
He said biofuel boosters once boasted about how their industry would raise commodity prices. Now they are absolving themselves of responsibility for rising food costs.
Wells said groups like his are drawing attention to that contradiction, but there is no conspiracy to undermine the biofuel sector.
He said many organizations have always drawn a distinction between grain and cellulose-based biofuel production.
Martin Reaney, a leading biofuel researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, is upset by the recent biofuel bashing, but he agreed this isn’t the typical left versus right kind of issue.
He said there is definitely a left camp that is coming out against the industry, but there are unusual alliances in this case because the oil companies are also not big supporters of biofuel.
Quaiattini said most of the opposition he faces in Ottawa while attempting to get a critical piece of biofuel legislation passed is coming from the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois, two left-of-centre parties that are tying biofuel to the world food crisis.
Quaiattini said both parties have been generally supportive of biofuel yet are attempting to tie up legislation that will give the industry its legs.
“It’s somewhat curious,” he said.
However, he doesn’t completely buy the left versus right divide on the biofuel issue because there are many left leaning environmentalists and mainstream Canadians who support the industry.
“To suggest that those that support biofuels only occupy the right of the political spectrum wouldn’t be accurate at all.”
Quaiattini believes the industry will win back some ground on the left once it switches to cellulose-based ethanol, but companies first need to generate cash using the existing grain-based biofuel technology.
