L’impiego di mais per la produzione di bioetanolo per autotrazione : una valutazione dei potenziali impatti sul sistema agroalimentare mondiale

Bio-energies are a very hot topic currently widely discussed at many levels. International organizations, different countries, different political parties together with scientists and economists or simple expert often have opinions which are obviously conflicting. The topic is very hot today because of many different heterogeneous factors. Amongst the most important one we can quote: - the need for a better energy security - needs deriving from the very high price of the oil barrel - programs related to climate changes and efforts to find solutions capable of eliminating or reducing the negative impact of human activity on the planet - the need to stimulate agricultural activities through political actions, in the poorest parts of the world. Within bio-energy sector the segment of bio-fuels represents a potential growth for the demand of many agricultural commodities. Ethanol and bio-diesel, which are respectively the result of starch and sugar cultures and oil-seeds, we present an alternative outcome to what traditionally generated by the above mentioned cultures. The current movements on the prices of the most important raw materials, energy or others, throws the attention to potential risks from the point of view of food security created by the impact of the growth of the demand of energetic products from agriculture. (Schmidhuber, 2007) In this paper we focus on bio-ethanol, the most important bio-fuel use it for transportation in the world. The aim of this paper is to present a critical analysis which can lead to potential solutions to the dilemma on the competition between new utilizations for corn, one of the most important cereals in the world: the growing demand form the energy sector; the most traditional use for feeding humans and animals. The effort is to approach this topic from the production standpoint and to assess the potential of the agricultural sector in comparison with the current and future needs stemming from the energy and the nutritional market. In order to define a situation which is as realistic as possible, I have chosen to focus only on the incremental demand of corn is from its usage in the production of bio-ethanol for transportation. This incremental request its only one of the new demands which the whole global agricultural sector will have to face in the near future before the real possibilities of development of second generation bio-fuels become known. In order to have the correct interpretation of the issues discussed in this paper I inevitably had to make a critical analysis of many papers published on a very debated topic: bio-fuels (Chapter 2). A first top-level analysis shows that there is a big debate in America, particularly in the United States, on bio-fuels. Slightly less than 60% of the scientific papers which I now described have been written in America. More than 80% of these papers present different models used for forecasting and analysis aimed at research. From a purely statistical point of view Europe seems to be lagging behind in the study and assessment of the political and economical impact of bio-fuels. Scientific publications issued in Europe tackle a wide range of different topics. A possible explanation of this fact is the lack of a clear guideline in approaching this topic, both from the scientific and the political communities. Finally, I have taken into account the publications issued by the Supra-national organizations such as FAO, OECD and the European commission. In this case, the topics dealt with are mostly orientated at the study of the potential impact of the development of bio-fuels on local and global economies and on the agricultural sector. The main purpose of these studies is to support the economical and political objectives of different countries and institutions. In order to understand the possible evolution of the markets of corn and ethanol it is very important to study the world supply for these two products (Chapter 3). This is essential also to answer to the many questions coming from many sides on the issues of bio-fuels. The wealth of data on cereal cultures has to be compared to a situation of a widespread lack of data on ethanol, which in many cases are incorrect and sometimes contradictory, depending from the sources. At worldwide level production data show that corn is the most important cereal, with a production of 695 million tons (2006). This represents only 30% of the global worldwide cereal production which is 2.221 billion tons. The price of corn (see Chapter 3), and of the other most important cereals, has grown significantly in the two recent years both inside the European Union and abroad. In particular the price inside the European Union countries has progressively aligned to the international price, after the dismantling of the subsidies put in place by the CAP. There are many factors which have an impact on this growth. From the point of view of the supply, the negative weather conditions which until a few years ago only had a local impact on markets are now very much perceived also on the international market and create quick changes in prices. From the point of view of demand, on the other side, there are two different issues which create a strong increase in the worldwide demand: a) the first one is related to the fact that in the most recent years the demand for cereals used for food, both for animals an for human beings, has grown at a faster pace than the supply; b) the second one relates to the incremental demand of corn and other cereals for use in the energy field and, in particular, in the production of bio-ethanol. This picture, which is already very complex, must also take into consideration the problems which have an impact since quite some time on the raw materials, including the three main cereals. The worldwide production of bio-ethanol (see Chapter 3) has reached 51.3 billion liters in 2006 growing 15 percentage point from previous year (GBEP, 2007). The international exchanges of bio-fuels, based on the COMTRADE data base, 2 shows how the international trade of denaturated alcohol has strongly increased. In the two most recent years the overall value of international exchanges went from about 1.2 billion US dollars to 3.5 billion. This sudden growth, which compares to a market which in the past was totally lacking a significant growth pattern, can be explained by the increase of bio-ethanol used as a fuel. The price of ethanol, since 2005 shows a market upward trend and is very volatile, probably because of speculations in this specific market segment. From their research on the possible evolution of the supply of corn it is clear how the development may be strongly impacted by the immobility of the areas dedicated to agriculture on one side and by the technological progress on the other. The laughter seems to be very important as far as increasing yields, particularly at worldwide level where there are vast areas which may show good potential for improvement. A further element to consider is the ability of the policies for the agricultural sector to have an influence on the growth of the supply. The impact peace policies seem to have a significant impact only on the short and medium term trends but seem to be negligible would respect to a longer period of time. The analysis of the growth pattern of the demand of corn for traditional utilizations (see Chapter 5), with the purpose to forecast the evolution through the year 2020, outlines some significant characteristics including: a) the importance of developing countries both from a qualitative and a quantitative point of view, b) the fact that growth pattern in the long period is equivalent to the extrapolated trend line. In the short and medium period, however, the growth is erratic and influenced by market trends. In order to make an evaluation of the incremental demand of corn due to the production of bio-ethanol (Chapter 6) it is important to distinguish two phases. 1. The analysis of the energy strategies of the countries involved in the production of bio-fuels and the definition of the political targets for bio-ethanol. 2. The forecast of the volume of bio-ethanol needed to achieve the targets previously defined. The total demand of bio-ethanol forecasted for the year 2020 is 205 billion liters. The analysis of the potential demand of bio-ethanol for transportation in the year 2020 outlines two possible different scenarios for the utilization of corn related to the production of this bio-fuel. - In the first scenario the total volume of corn needed is 278,5 million tons - In the second scenario the total volume of corn needed is 389,9 million tons These are the minimum and maximum values of the interval inside which the actual demand of corn should be positioned in the scenario which we have described for the year 2020. If we compare the data of demand and supply of corn (Chapter 7) we notice a current balance which is slightly negative (-0,05 million tons at worldwide level, - 0,75 million tons at European level). The demand of corn which we forecast for the year 2020 leads to three different scenarios related to three different levels of utilization of this cereal for the production of bio-ethanol. If we compare these scenarios with our forecast of the supply for the year 2020 we notice a negative balance which may range from a minimum of 60 million tons to a maximum of 511 million tons of corn. This first result shows the current inadequacies of the world agricultural system in all the different hypothesis, whatever the development of bio-fuels might be. The increase of the demand of corn related to production of bio-ethanol makes it even more difficult for the agricultural system to react positively with a growth from the side of the supply.