Just over 18 months ago ActionAid held a global meeting at Johanesburg to talk about hunger – for the first time in history over one billion people are going hungry, making food an issue that could no longer be ignored.

Activists were already talking about important ideas in the fight against hunger – sustainable agriculture, support for women farmer’s (forget Farmer Giles it’s women who produce most of the world’s food) and the importance of averting the worst effects of climate change.

Then people started mentioning a new threat to food access: industrial biofuels. Activists from Mozambique, Ghana, India, Senegal and Tanzania have all been telling the same story – poor farmers forced off land, unprofitable biofuel crops grown, people going hungry – it was clear that biofuels were harming people now and with their rapid expansion the situation was only going to get worse.

The crucial thing about industrial biofuels is that they are made from crops – very often food crops. This includes maize, wheat and oils – staple foods.

The amount of biofuel in UK cars is going to almost quadruple in the next ten years because of government targets. This biofuel won’t come from thin air and will hurt the world’s poorest because as land is switched from food crops to fuel crops, food costs will rise massively – the Overseas Development Institute estimates that this could be by as much as 76%.

Food price rises hurt the poor most – people in developing countries can spend up to 80% of their income on food so even a small price increase can have a dramatic impact on hunger. Whole families skip meals and parents have to make impossible choices between food, healthcare or education for their children.

Biofuels are driving a global tragedy. ActionAid have just launched a report called ‘Meals per Gallon: The impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger” which shows how EU biofuel targets could push 100 million more people into hunger in just 10 years.

It’s not just the increase in food prices that mean billions of people being pushed into hunger. Whilst conducting the research for our report we heard disturbing stories of farmers who had lost their land to biofuels – people like Matilde Ngoene a farmer in Mozambique whose farm was taken from her by a biofuel company, she told us:

“They (an industrial biofuel company) actually took the land when it was already tilled. They haven’t paid us anything, they haven’t told us anything. They haven’t offered any jobs, they haven’t employed us – they haven’t offered us anything. They haven’t given us any alternative farms. What we want is to get our farms back, because that is what our livelihood is dependent on. We are dying of hunger and there is nothing that we have that is actually our own.”

This is not an isolated story. From Ghana to Guatemala and Mozambique to India, ActionAid is seeing first hand the consequences of western consumption of biofuels. EU companies have already acquired or are in the process of acquiring 5 million hectares for biofuel production – that’s an area of land twice the size of Wales.

And as if that wasn’t catastrophic enough biofuels are not even the answer to climate change. If you look at the science, almost all biofuels are worse than the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace. Scientists have realised that there are two main issues: fertilisers and land.

Biofuels need nitrogen fertiliser to grow. Some of this nitrogen is released into the atmosphere making nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. More importantly, increased biofuel production creates more demand for land. If we cut down rainforests or plough up grasslands to plant biofuels, we will be releasing massive amounts of carbon. This can happen directly, like in Indonesia where rainforests are being cut down to grow palm oil. Or it can happen indirectly when farmers are being pushed off their land and have to find new land to grow food.

The UK now faces a choice – we can continue to expand our biofuel production at the expense of poor people, or we can stop investing in an approach that is not even helping the environment. The UK government has less than five months to submit its plan for renewable energy use in transport to the European Commission – ActionAid are fighting to make sure it doesn’t include a commitment to increasing the amount of industrial biofuel in our petrol and diesel.

You can read the report in full or visit the ActionAid website to help us demand Zero Meals Per Gallon and stop this disaster before it happens.

Written by guest blogger, ActionAid Campaigner Emma Hughes.