A/HRC/9/23 page 39 4. The policies of the U.S. and of the EU are singled out in this respect. In contrast, according to this study, “Brazilian ethanol production from sugar cane has not contributed appreciably to the recent increase in food commodities prices, because Brazilian sugar cane production has increased rapidly and sugar exports have nearly tripled since 2000. Brazil uses approximately half of its sugar cane to produce ethanol for domestic consumption and exports and the other half to produce sugar. The increase in cane production has been large enough to allow sugar production to increase from 17.1 million tons in 2000 to 32.1 million tons in 2007 and exports to increase from 7.7 million tons to 20.6 million tons. Brazil’s share of global sugar exports increased from 20 per cent in 2000 to 40 per cent in 2007, and that was sufficient to keep sugar price increases small except for 2005 and early 2006 when Brazil and Thailand had poor crops due to drought”.68 5. Considering the impact of the increase of the international prices of food commodities on the poorest, policies aimed at promoting the use of agrofuels from feedstock, having an inflationary impact on staple foods, could only be justified under international law if very strong arguments are offered, showing that the benefits from agrofuels outweigh the negative impacts. Indeed, the introduction of mandates for agrofuels and the provision of subsidies encouraging the creation of a viable market for agrofuels should be considered as deliberately retrogressive measures. Under the doctrine of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a State adopting such measures has the burden of proving that they have been introduced only after the most careful consideration of all alternatives and provided only that they are duly justified by reference to the totality of the rights provided for in the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.69 6. For the moment, the Special Rapporteur has serious doubts that this burden can be met. The main justifications which have been put forward for the imposition of blending mandates and the granting of subsidies to encourage agrofuels production are that this would limit the emission of greenhouse gases; that this would ensure a security of supply, limiting the dependency of the EU and the U.S., in particular, on crude oil imported from politically instable regions; and that this would create employment. But, as already noted in a previous note presented by the Special Rapporteur, the first justification has been seriously challenged by recent scientific evidence, which demonstrates that, taking into account the full life cycle of the product (including the shifts in land-use resulting from an increased demand for cropland for agrofuels) as well as the massive volumes of water required to produce fuel from crops, the hopes put in agrofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels have been largely misplaced: indeed, with the exception of the production of ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil, the carbon balance of other agrofuels produced from crops is potentially very negative, particularly when land with high 68 Id., at 9. 69 See General comment No. 3 (1990), para. 9.