‘Food or Energy?’ Is that the question?

Bioenergy currently draws worldwide attention, both positive and negative. Proponents argue that the large-scale development of bioenergy, more precisely of biofuels, could be part of the solution for diversifying energy sources, enhancing security of energy supply, and meeting environmental and rural development objectives. Opponents argue that it could drive up prices of agricultural products, and hence, threaten agricultural food security, wildlife areas/ecosystems, and international trade flows. A highly-aggregated System Dynamics model of the worldwide food/bioenergy issue is developed in this paper in order to investigate interactional effects between agricultural food production and bioenergy production at the world level.