Josie Cohen, Campaigns Officer

Now, this requires a bit of a drum roll ...

Because this blog post features the last of the videos from the biofuels debate! This one is the Q&A, where the panelists take on all the burning questions from the audience - of which there were a few, because the topic of biofuels is hotly debated.

We say that biofuels are bad - because they contribute to climate change and increase global hunger. Among many others, Kevin Richter of Friends of the Earth and Ben Webster of The Times agreed with us on this.

Check out the below video and see how you think the panelists fared at our big biofuels debate, under the scrutiny of the audience members. And remember - this may be the final video clip from our event, but the debate is still alive and kicking online. So get involved!

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Lotty Reynolds, Campaigner

We started campaigning for  a  supermarket watchdog two years ago. Since then you've taken more than 40,000 actions, pressuring Lord Mandelson, writing to your MPs  and enjoying our giant bananas.  Two weeks ago, your valiant support helped make the difference:  all three main parties agreed that there should be a watchdog to make supermarkets play fair with the people who supply our food.

Thank-you for everything you've done to support some of the world's most vulnerable people

What next?
There's still a debate about the exact powers of the watchdog, and about whether it will be able to protect people overseas from. The consultation ends on 30th April, and we urgently need you to take part.

Submit an email to the consultation, and make sure they make the right decision.

Send your message to Steve Smith at GSCOPmonitoringbody@bis.gsi.gov.uk . We've given you some suggested text below, but please write whatever you like, making sure that Department for Business knows how strongly you feel about the people who produce your food.

We're protesting against plans to increase the UK's use of biofuels, outside the Department for Transport on 1 April.

So come and join us! 

Why are we protesting?

The Department for Transport is thinking about making the UK use 4x the amount of biofuels in our petrol and diesel. 

So, more and more land in the developing world will be used to grow biofuels instead of food. This is not OK because:

* It will push up food prices
* It pushes people off their land with no choice, and no compensation.

This makes it much harder for people in the developing world to feed themselves and their families.

What are the details of the protest?

On 1 April, ActionAid will 'reclaim land for food not fuel' outside the Department for Transport. We'll be taking over an area -  demanding that land is given back to people in developing countries for growing their food on.

If you can take part, please email campaign@actionaid.org - We are waiting to hear from you! The more people who come along, the stronger our voice will be, so please do come along.

If you can’t be there in person...

Track what's happening at the offline protest by following @actionaidliz and join in the protest online. Simply:

* Email the department for transport - email Lord Adonis, the Secretary of State for Transport, telling him to cut biofuels targets

* Tweet the department for transport - you can either retweet @actionaidliz on 1 April, or make up your own tweet along the lines of: on #aprilfoolsday don't be a #biofool - say no @dft to #biofuels in UK petrol! http://cot.ag/bboA5w

* Spread the word on Facebook, Twitter and by emailing your friends and colleagues. We suggests something like: This April Fools Day, don't let the department for Transport take you for a biofool! Make sure the UK is not putting poor people's food into UK cars. Spread the word and email the department for transport http://cot.ag/bboA5w

Hope you have a great April Fools Day - remember, don't be a Biofool - get biofuels out of UK cars!

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Richard George, Roads and Climate Campaigner for campaign for better transport

The Government thinks we need biofuels, not to tackle climate change, but to cater for a predicted increase in demand for car travel. The thinking goes that to achieve economic growth, in line with past behaviour, we can all expect to travel further than we do today, in cars carrying fewer passengers. Instead of trying to correct this, the political path of least resistance is to let it happen.

But that means finding a way to square the circle: to reduce carbon emissions while increasing the amount of driving we do. Hence the fixation with biofuels, electric vehicles and scrappage schemes, which somehow might allow us all to drive further while saving the planet. This, in political terms, would be the Holy Grail: government hits its carbon reductions targets without anyone having to change their behaviour.

That biofuels cause more harm than fossil fuels (to quote a recent Times article) is beside the point. Even if biofuels could provide a carbon-neutral energy source without harming the environment, they’d still be a foolish course to pursue, because climate change is not the only problem transport poses:

    * Last year 2,500 people were killed in road traffic collisions;
    * Around 7,000 people die each year in London alone from respiratory diseases caused by poor air quality (itself caused by the toxic blend of gases belched out of our exhausts); 
    * We all waste countless hours sitting in traffic jams, but no matter how much extra road space we add, it just fills up with more traffic.

So business as usual isn’t an option, even without climate change.

Instead of placing all our eggs in the biofuels basket we should be designing our towns and cities to a human scale, with the services we need close enough to walk or cycle to. We know that decent planning and behavioural change programmes work, because the Government has been piloting them in towns and cities across the UK for several years. The only sustainable way to tackle transport’s carbon footprint is to reduce the need to travel, instead of desperately trying to find ways to accommodate the impacts of car dependant development, with its accompanying pollution and gridlock.

But perhaps the most frustrating feature of biofuels – other than deforestation, impact on indigenous people, the use of food for fuel and all the other problems of biofuels – is that Ministers use them as an excuse for inaction. Hailing biofuels as a panacea means not needing to provide people with alternatives to car use, because biofuels (allegedly) make cars greener. We can keep spending our limited budgets building new roads, instead of on buses, or trams, or on making walking and cycling more attractive, because biofuels will reduce our emissions without us having to do anything. Yet even here Whitehall can’t get it right. Whoever wrote the Department for Transport’s Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future forgot to account for the carbon produced when growing and transporting fuels. Oops! Biofuels aren’t just the wrong solution: they’re a hindrance to the right one. The only way to unpick this problem is to take biofuels – and all the other false solutions – off the table

Richard George is the Roads and Climate Campaigner for campaign for better transport which is the UK’s leading authority on sustainable transport.

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Josie Cohen, Campaigns Officer

Morning all,

Good to see that biofuels are still on the news agenda - they should be, what with how they can contribute to climate change and increase global hunger!

There's an interesting piece featured on the Reuters UK, EU drafts reveal biofuel's 'environmental damage' which discusses the impact of biofuels on climate change as well as how they take up land which would otherwise be used for crops. Also, it points out that biofuels are not good for species like Orangutans, which is another hard hitting effect of the biofuels 'greenwash'.

So go on, take a look at the article and remind yourself why biofuels should not be part of the UK's renewable energy targets.  Then, if you haven't already, email the Department For Transport asking them to stop the use of biofuels in UK transport. 

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Meredith Alexander, Head of Trade and Corporates

Supporting women farmers will help solve the hunger crisis. ActionAid teamed up with Concern and a parliamentary group to bring this message to MPs and people standing for election. Here’s the speech I gave:

ActionAid works in over 40 countries to help poor people create better lives for themselves and their families. Tackling hunger is one of our biggest priorities.

As the Department for International Development highlights in its hunger paper on the Millennium Development Goals, seventy percent of farmers are women. Many of these women are farming but hungry: they produce less food than their family needs to survive.

But with a little help, these women can move beyond surviving and actually start to thrive.

What does a woman farmer need to thrive? She needs land. She needs good quality seeds. She needs water for her crops and tools for her fields. She needs credit and training to invest in making her farm better. Basically, she needs the same thing any other farmer needs. Unfortunately though, because she is a woman she is much less likely to get them. Women farmers get much less support than men. For example, a study of five African countries showed that men received 10 times as much credit as women farmers.

These are such small things, but if we put them in the hands of women farmers, they can turn around their own lives and help end global hunger.

How do I know this? I know because I have seen what it looks like when a woman thrives as a farmer.

I want to tell you about a woman ActionAid works with in Uganda. Leya Chede is a small holder farmer. 10 years ago her family was so hungry and so poor they couldn’t even afford to buy soap. But now everything is different. Leya’s farm is thriving. She grows four types of crops and has expanded into poultry and goats.

Leya’s family is thriving. They have built a decent house, and now she sends her children to school. Even Leya’s community is improving. She employs other people in the village to work in her farm, giving them a decent income.

And Leya herself? Investing in Leya as a farmer has also helped her gain more control over her life. Her success has given her the confidence to play a bigger role in decision making in her own family. Last October, she even went to the capital to lobby an MP.

All of this was made possible by a very small investment to set up a community seed bank. That money bought better seeds for a range of crops. Leya gets good quality seeds at planting time and then gives up part of her harvest. This small investment made all the difference.

Women have the skills and determination to thrive as farmers. With just a small bit of support like this, women farmers will make the hunger crisis a thing of the past.