Reconciling food and industrial needs for biomass

This chapter is mainly about non-OECD countries and their developing bioeconomies. They are central to the development of a globalised bioeconomy and to the sustainable future of OECD countries’ bioeconomies. Future projections see the need for significantly increased agricultural output to feed a growing population. And yet there seems to be limited capacity for increased land use (extensification). This dilemma could bring OECD countries and partner economies into competing use for biomass. Many OECD countries will be net biomass importers, while many developing and poorer nations can be expected to be exporters of biomass. Nations could easily collide with each other through biomass disputes. A top priority for policy makers is to reconcile the food and industrial demands of biomass to prevent negative effects in some nations being created through positive effects in others. A sustainable bioeconomy cannot be produced through such poorly distributed benefits.