Speaking at a press briefing yesterday (30th April), John Holmes, the recently appointed head of the UN task force on the Global Food Crisis said that it was important to avoid a knee-jerk reaction over biofuels. Holmes, who is also UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, was briefing journalists on the UN's reaction to the world food crisis, and it's decision to set up the task force.

Holmes pointed to the medium and longer term trade issues which the world faced. "There are the medium- and longer term trade issues, for example the issue of the Doha Round, the issue of liberalization of agricultural trade, how far can we take that, how will that respond to the needs of the moment. There is obviously the question of biofuels, and how that plays into this crisis – what are the right measures to take, the right attitude to take to that? Clearly, it is something that needs a new look in present circumstances without wanting to fall in any sense into knee-jerk reactions of saying all biofuels are bad or good. We need to look at it in a careful, sophisticated and differentiated way, between different regions of the world and between different products."

He was challenged on his approach to biofuels, particularly following the Secretary-General's comments that the United Nations was in the business of feeding hungry people, not feeding motor cars.

However, Holmes was quite clear when he explained that biofuels were developed in response to a very serious problem, which was the effects of climate change and the need to mitigate that and to reduce emissions. They were not invented just for fun. Whatever they were doing, he said, they needed to ensure that food production remained high, and that they were not making another problem which was very serious and long-term and fundamental. There were geographical areas of the world where growing crops for biofuels might make sense but others where it might not make sense because of the nature of the land or the nature of production. There were products where it made sense to use them for biofuels, and other crops which were not so useful to use.

There were some crops that had no food value, but could be very useful as biofuels, and there was a particular nut in India which was in that category. That was why he said they needed to look at biofuels in a differentiated way, and not say all biofuels were bad. Clearly they needed to look at this question again, in the light of what was now known on the state of agricultural production and the balance between demand and supply. It needed to be looked at in a sophisticated way, rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

Asked whether the United Nations position was against a moratorium of biofuels, as proposed by Jean Ziegler, Holmes said they could not simplify the United Nations position. It did not have a position for or against a moratorium. But they could deduce from what he had been saying that there should be a sophisticated, differentiated, carefully calculated approach to this. So an instant moratorium did not seem to fit with that, but the United Nations system as such had not taken a position in any formal sense.