A/HRC/9/23 page 40 carbon content, such as forest or peat land, is converted to grow agrofuels.70 The second justification is highly implausible. Agrofuels cannot constitute an alternative to reliance on fossil fuels. This follows from a simple comparison between the shifts in the use of crops for the production of agrofuels and the share of agrofuels in the transport fuel market: in 2007, approximately 23 per cent of coarse grain production in the U.S. was used to produce ethanol, for a share of ethanol in the gasoline transport fuel market of 4.5 per cent in 2008 ; in the EU, although 47 per cent of vegetable oil production was used in the production of biodiesel, causing higher imports of vegetable oil to meet domestic consumption needs, the biodiesel share of the diesel transport fuel market was 3.0 per cent.71 The U.S. National Academies of Sciences found that even if all the corn and soybeans produced in the U.S. in 2005 were used for bioethanol production, this would only replace 12 per cent of the country’s gasoline demand and 6 per cent of its diesel demand.72 As to the third justification, it relates to the second level at which the development of agrofuels may have an impact on the right to food. 2. The impact on human rights in the country of production 7. Apart from its impact on the level of certain agricultural commodities, the development of agrofuels could have social and environmental impacts, which also may affect the right to food as an element of the right to an adequate standard of living. Specifically, the increased demand for crops for fuel may raise the price of cropland, making access to land even less affordable than it is presently as smallholders will be pit against large producers for the acquisition of land. It could lead to the eviction of landusers whose titles to the land are insecure, or to the displacement of populations, particularly of indigenous peoples, in order to allow for the 70 The deforestation encouraged by the increased demand for agrofuels may be indirect. For instance, the increased demand for maize in the U.S., a result of the policies encouraging production of ethanol from that crop particularly since 2004, has led to restricting the supply of soybean by U.S. farmers, attracted by the subsidies linked to the production of maize for ethanol. The result has been the expansion of soybean production in Brazil, at the expense of portions of the cerrado and of the Amazonian rainforest. 71 The situation of Brazil is different. They have imposed blending mandates since 1938, and it sought to ensure its energy independence by supporting a domestic ethanol policy, Proálcool, since 1975. As a result, 54 of Brazil’s sugarcane crop goes to ethanol, for a share of gasoline transport fuel market of 40 percent. These figures are provided in FAO, Bioenergy, food security and sustainability, High-level Conference on World Food Security, doc. HLC/08/INF/3, April 2008, para. 7. 72 M. Muller, T. Yelden and H. Schoonover, Food versus Fuel in the United States - Can Both Win in the Era of Ethanol?, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), September 2007, 2, available at www.iatp.org. The article refers to a study by the National Academies of Sciences, by J. Hill, E. Nelson, D. Timan, S. Polasky and D. Tiffany, “Environmental, economic and energetic costs of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels”, 12 July 2006.