It's supposed to become Africa's biggest ethanol plant. Mozambican president Guebuza recently laid the first stone for the Procana project in the southern province of Gaza. It is planned to produce 480,000 liters of biofuel daily in 2010. In order to do so, 9000 tons of sugar cane are needed every day. 30,000 hectares of land have been reserved for the growth of these crops. These fields of course have to be irrigated, and there lies the problem. The water comes from a dam in the Limpopo river that local farmers also use for irrigation. They fear that the biofuel producer will take up so much water that nothing will be left for their maize and rice fields. Once again the question rises what deserves priority: fuel or food. UN-expert Jean Ziegler already called the growing production of biofuel a 'crime against humanity'. Food becomes more expensive because arable land is used to produce fuel, stated Ziegler, and the world's poor are the ones who suffer the consequences.
