The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a new decision-support tool to ensure that countries can enter the rapidly growing field of bioenergy industry to produce benefits for the poor without jeopardizing their food security.

The tool, an ‘analytical framework’ designed by a team of economists from FAO, Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute and Darmstadt’s Oeko-Institut, was unveiled at a two-day experts’ meeting of FAO’s Bioenergy and Food Security (BEFS) project.
The three-year project, funded by Germany, is aimed at making sure that bioenergy does not impair global food security. The analytical framework allows governments interested in entering the bioenergy sector to calculate the effect of their policy decisions on the food security of their populations. Bioenergy can affect food prices and rural incomes and thus has important implications – both positive and negative – for food security.
FAO Press Release | FAO Climate Change and Bioenergy Unit |