RESISTING THE CORPORATIONS

'Our planet cannot feed 1bn cars'

At a time when Boeing is claiming it will be able to run its aircraft on agrofuel in five years' time, if not sooner, and while the general hope for alternatives to oil is high, environmental protesters decided to highlight the absurdity of the corporate 'bio' claims about agrofuels by 'participating' in Europe's largest agrofuel conference.

The European Biofuels Expo and Conference was held in the Newark, Nottinghamshire, on 16th October, which is coincidentally the UN World Food Day. The aim of the protest was to show how damaging the commercial production of agrofuel currently is and would be if it goes ahead on the scale that would be necessary to sustain Western lifestyles. The vast majority of recent global food price rises are due to the increasing use of biofuels for transport, which have taken over tens of millions of acres of land previously used to grow food.

Protesters managed to disrupt the expo in various ways and even had their actions covered by The Guardian. Six protesters from a new group called Action Against Agrofuels climbed into the rafters of the main conference hall and held banners, while other activists set off rape alarms inside the centre. Meanwhile, some 40 protesters held banners and leafletted ouside.

Last year there was a similar expo in the same building and protesters entered the building to disrupt it. This year, some protesters were apparently invited to take part in the conference debates, yet it was £125 for a day entry pass, which may have been partly due to the actions last year and may have meant some people were not able to afford to go in and have a civilised chat with the biofuels 'experts'.

There were hundreds of exhibitors and hundreds of visitors at the European Biofuels Expo and Conference. See www.biodiesel-expo.co.uk/index_techshow.php for further information. Also see the website of Biofuel Watch, another group working on agrofuel issues: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.