MANILA, Philippines -- An international non-government organization has urged a moratorium on agrofuel development, saying this is not the solution to the worsening food situation or the ill-effects of climate change.

The Southeast Asia Regional Initiative for Community Empowerment (Searice) accused the government of recklessly jumping into the global frenzy for agrofuel without setting clear parameters or considering its implications on the growing demand for food.

"The government has to stop agrofuel expansion," said Searice executive director Wilhelmina Pelegrina.

Pelegrina noted that following the passage of the Biofuels Act, the Philippine government embarked on several investment projects, committing 1.2 million hectares to growing jatropha alone.

The government has likewise committed another one million hectares to grow sorghum, corn, and rice for biofuel production in deals it clinched with the governments of Spain and China, she said.

"The government has made no effort to expand the area for rice production, covering only four million hectares, while it continues to allocate more resources for agrofuel production, particularly from its environment, agriculture and energy budget," Pelegrina said.

She noted that the Biofuels Board of the Department of Agriculture alone has an allotment of as much as P90 million in the 2008 budget.

On a similar note, agriculture expert Camilla Moreno slammed developed countries, led by the United States, for setting up a global emissions market for agrofuels and promoting global warming mitigation policies and trade in carbon credits based on agrofuel production.

Moreno, a lawyer and post-graduate degree holder in Development, Agriculture and Society from the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, is the author of "Food and Energy Sovereignty Now: Brazilian grassroots Position on Agroenergy" published by the Oakland Institute in February 2008.

In a briefing Tuesday, Moreno noted that several countries, including the Philippines, are "rapidly adopting legislation in compliance with a new global energy policy and in the light of international negotiations to address climate change in what will be a post-Kyoto protocol regime starting in 2012."

She noted however, that neither the United States, the European Union, nor Japan, have the capacity to achieve their energy targets from their available agricultural land and crop production.

"If the US was to replace all its fuel with ethanol produced domestically, no land would be left for food production," she explained.

"This means that increasing the use of biofuels in Northern developed countries will depend on production in Southern, mostly tropical, agricultural areas like the Philippines,? she said.