Biofuels, environmental sustainability, and food security: A review of 51 countries

Abstract

Biofuels will not only be a solution for a good environmental quality, but may also bring an increase in food production. This scenario, which refers to sufficiently huge supply of biofuels, capable to bring better environmental quality vis-à-vis food security. Biofuels have the potential to offer a win-win opportunity to improve environmental quality, whereby better environmental quality may promote a sizeable increase in food production. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of biofuels on food security, given the level of environmental quality in 51 developing countries. The results of dynamic generalized method of moments indicate that the interaction term between biofuels and environmental quality has a positive and significant impact on food security. This implies that biofuels will initially bring about a competition to food security but in a later stage it can lead to a favorable condition for agriculture. Therefore, significant expansion and consumption of biofuels could contribute to increment in food security and sustain the environmental quality.