This is how entire populations get starved to death. First move them off their land, making them dependent on the global economy, then if food prices spike, they die.

In none of these places are the needs of local residents taken into account. In Ghana, BioFuel Africa wrested away land clearing and usage rights from a village chief who could neither read nor write. The man gave his consent with his thumbprint. The weekly newspaper Public Agenda felt reminded of the “darkest days of colonialism.” The Ghanaian environmental protection agency eventually put a stop to the clear-cutting, but only after 2,600 hectares (6,422 acres) of forest had been cut down.
…
In a recently published study on the “Biofuel Industry in Tanzania,” journalist Khoti Kamanga of the University of Dar es Salaam warns against the side effects of energy plantations. The population, Kamanga writes, is usually uninformed, while the cultivation of energy plants usually goes hand-in-hand with forced resettlement. According to Kamanga, it is very likely that ethanol production will also affect food prices in Tanzania, with the country’s dependency on food imports growing even further.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2008/gb2008098_506787.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_global+business

Here’s the bitter irony of this situation.

Credible studies show that with plausible technology developments, biofuels could supply some 30% of global demand in an environmentally responsible manner without affecting food production. To realize that goal, so-called advanced biofuels must be developed from dedicated energy crops, separately and distinctly from food.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/435

Oil demand rises at roughly 2% per year globally, so even with a very optimistic take on biofuels, all of this human suffering that will be caused by the biofuels push buys us 15 years of stability before it either erodes food supply or simply tops out with no more biofuels available.

Compare with the savings on fuel efficiency – reasonably 50% of current oil consumption – and imagine the money going into efficient vehicles.

The exception to all this, of course, is biofuels from saltwater algae grown in desert tanks. That could work, seems to be very scalable in theory, and is highly promising as a long term solution to liquid transportation fuel needs.

http://www.algalturfscrubber.com/biomass.htm is where you read about those.

No land clearances for biofuels, please. People are going to get killed and not a few of them, if that happens. Land clearances are generally the start of really violent and nasty revolutions, and Africa’s a primed powderkeg for a phase transition from nation states to tribalism across at least half of the continent.

That will be bad. There will be war, there will be genocide, there will be horror. Land clearances are precisely the kinds of activities that push the scales towards holocaust. It’s just asking for disaster.

STOP!