Alsons' bioethanol project a threat to food security

BY Bong D. Fabe
ALCANTARA and Sons Consolidated Resources, Inc.’s (Alsons) bioethanol plant project in the hinterland barangays here is a big threat to this city’s food security program.

This as the city land use plan (CLUP) for Year 2000 of Cagayan de Oro states that land devoted to crop

cultivation is only 22 percent or 4,529 hectares of the city’s total land area.

Cagayan de Oro only has 20,646 hectares of agricultural land left, the CLUP 2000 said.

Carl Cesar Rebuta, team leader of the Cagayan de Oro City office of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth (LRC-KsK/FoE), said that biofuel production is a competitor to any country’s food security.

“As experienced by biofuel-producing countries, biofuel production is not only detrimental to the environment but more importantly also threaten food security and rural livelihood,” he said.

Rebuta underscores the statement of an Alsons official that their bioethanol plant proposed for construction in barangays Bayanga and Mambuaya will need at least 10,000 hectares of cassava plantation to support its daily requirement.

Tirso Santillan, Alsons executive vice president, said this large tract of cassava land is needed to produce 100,000 liters of 99.5 percent pure ethanol every day, the daily rated output of the proposed plant.

But Rebuta said the raw materials requirement of Alsons’ proposed bioethanol plant will directly undermine this city’s food security.

“Converting 10,000 hectares of rich productive land into cassava plantations will mean competition to the food security, not only of the city, but of the region,” Rebuta said.

“Later on, previous locally available farm produce will become expensive,” he added as he explained that because of cassava will have a ready market in Alsons, farmers will be forced to abandon cultivating for food and concentrate on planting cassava.

The city land use plan (CLUP) for Year 2000 of Cagayan de Oro states that land devoted for crop cultivation is very small.

According to the CLUP 2000, only 22 percent or 4,529 hectares of the city’s total land area are planted with crops.

The proposed bioethanol plant will be constructed on a 20-hectare land specifically converted by the City Council without due process into agri-industrial land from agricultural to accommodate Alsons. (Bong D. Fabe)