Biofuels and food markets

A period of food price inflation starting in 2020, exacerbated by the invasion of Ukraine, brought the ‘food versus fuel’ issue back into the political spotlight in recent years. This review paper for Oxfam discusses the evidence relating to the impact of biofuel mandates on food prices, updating our previous review on the subject, which is available here. It concludes that it is clear that biofuel policies have increased the prices of food commodities globally, and that these price increases have had a net negative impact on the global poor even though some net food producing farmers will have benefitted.