At the very moment I write these lines, the oil barrel reaches $ 146, a historical record.
Many blame oil speculators for this all time high, but this is hardly an argument. Oil producers are pumping as hard as they can, and there are no rising oil stocks in the world.
But on the demand side, the growth of emerging countries is unstoppable.
For the first time, millions of people in Brazil, China, and India are getting out of poverty thanks to their economical growth. More and more can they afford to build a house or to have a car, a refrigerator and other consumer goods. India’s car manufacturer Tata just presented a car that costs $ 2.300.
And those humanists that drive a beautiful and expensive hybrid car come and say: Stop developing now or you will ruin the planet. Don’t buy this new cheap car, just keep taking your five children to school on that old rusty bicycle of yours.
I think that keeping millions of people in poverty to save the environment is not the solution.
Solution lies in alternatives for oil. Another reason to find an alternative is because most of the oil reserves are located in the most unstable countries in the planet. Would you like to have your country dependent for always on people like Hugo Chavez, the Saudis, Gaddafi or those guys in Nigeria and Sudan?
Brazil has found an alternative fuel in sugarcane, a kind of big sweet grass originally from South East Asia, taken by Portuguese and Spanish explorers to Canarias and Azores Islands and then to the New World.
Brazil has been exporting sugar from sugarcane since the 1600’s.
In the 1970’s, when OPEC provoked a world oil crisis, Brazilian government started a program to produce ethanol from the fermentation of sugarcane saccharose.
In 1978, when oil represented 46% of the total Brazilian import, the first ethanol powered car was ready.
In 1986, 76% of the cars produced in Brazil were ethanol powered. Brazil produced on that year 12,3 billion liters of ethanol.
After those good years, oil prices went down, sugar prices went up and the use of ethanol as fuel was largely diminished.
However, the technology developed on those years on sugarcane production was fundamentally important to the moment Brazil is living now.
Since 2003, automobile industry is producing flex fuel cars. Cars that can use ethanol or gasoline or both together in the same motor. Today, 85% of the sales in the automobile industry in Brazil are flex fuel cars. The high oil prices have convinced investors that future lies in biofuels and the new boast of sugarcane industry is no longer a government program but an initiative of the private sector.
Today, Brazil is the number one in sugarcane production. The country produces 19% of the sugar and 33% of the ethanol produced in the world. In 2006, 422,9 million tons of sugarcane were harvested giving $ 6.2 billion in sugar exports and $ 1.6 billion in ethanol exports.
Showing off this huge potential, Brazil has frightened some competitors and has suddenly become a target of criticism from the international community because of the increase in sugarcane production.
First, Brazil has been accused of destroying the Amazon rainforest because of sugarcane production. That is a big lie. Pick up a map and find the state of São Paulo. It’s right there in the south. About 60% of Brazilian sugarcane production comes from there, about 2.000km from the rainforest..
Second, they say Brazil is causing food prices to rise all over the world because we are replacing cereals for sugarcane. Another big lie. Cereals production in Brazil has never been so high. Sugarcane industry is recuperating wasted soil from pastures, renewing it and increasing its production. The same sugarcane plant can produce for 5 years in a row. Every 5 years it has to be replaced by other plant like beans or soya or peanuts for at least one year, so all the surface cultivated of sugarcane will also be producing grains.
Brazil has 355 million hectares of arable lands, 80% of those are still available. From those arable lands, only 1% is used to produce sugarcane.
In other places however, especially in the US and Europe, the story is quite different, and that is why biofuels are getting a bad name.
Europe produces sugar and ethanol from sugar beet, at a cost more than 6 times higher than Brazil. Brazilian sugar is heavily taxed to protect the EU market. United States uses corn to produce ethanol, also heavily subsidized. While 1 hectare of corn gives 3.000 liters of ethanol, 1 hectare of sugarcane gives 7.500 liters. And Americans are already using 64,8% of their arable land, 3.7% of it just to produce corn for ethanol.
Europe and the United states are also trying to produce biodiesel from plants like soya, sunflower and colza. Some days ago, British newspaper The Guardian showed a document from the World Bank saying that about 5 million hectares of land were used for those cultures instead of wheat in the last in the last 3 years.
The World Bank also estimated that the rise in food prices was in about 75% due to biofuels, especially because corn and soya are being used not as food anymore, but as fuel. But it also said that Brazilian sugarcane expansion was not causing it.
Oxfam also just release a report where they say from all kinds of biofuel, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is the best. Rich countries should buy it instead of spending US$ 15 billion (only last year) in subsidies trying to produce their own biofuel.
So, instead of buying ethanol from Brazil (a suggestion from John McCain by the way) at a low cost, they make their tax payer pay subsides to their inefficient farmers to produce, pay again a higher price for their fuel and sugar and pay again if they want to export something. Of course, they don’t want to depend on other people for their sugar and fuel as much as they don’t want to depend on other people for their oil, but hey, Brazilians are much nicer people than Hugo Chavez or Gaddafi. And they want to continue that policy it’s ok, but don’t blame Brazilians if the world goes hungry.
Sugarcane is not making anyone hungry, protectionism is.
The other lie is that sugarcane is erasing small farmers from the map. Let me tell you a story that happened in my home town, Araraquara, state of São Paulo. A small farmer that received some land from the Brazilian Agrarian Reform Institute tried to do beans, watermelons, corn and was always losing money. He made a partnership with a ethanol industry that supplied him with plants, fertilizers and machines in exchange for part of his harvest. He had a profit of R$ 90.000 in 3 years, invested in poultry and has a farm with 21.000 birds. Other small farmers did the same. The Institute understood that the land should be used for grains and vegetables production, took the land back and gave to other landless peasants. There was a fight, people got hurt, houses were burn… That old socialist thinking of a small happy farmer family with a pig, a little cow and some vegetables is over. Small farmers have also the right to get income, doesn’t matter if it comes from sugarcane or soya or anything else.
Sugarcane industry gives more than a million direct jobs.
It produces ethanol and sugar.
The residues of the industry are burned to produce electricity, in a season where there is little rainfall and the reservoirs of hydroelectrical power plants are low.
Other residues from sugarcane industry are used as fertilizers in the fields.
Sugarcane plantations will take all the CO2 released by ethanol powered cars in the atmosphere.
It has been renewing wasted land and improving the income of millions of families in the Brazilian countryside.
It made Brazil self sustained in fuel.
Brazil can still increases its production of sugarcane, and beef and grains as well without destroying the rainforest.
In the developing world, finding oil in your country has been more of a curse rather then a blessing. Instead of been used to make life better for the people, it has been a great source of corruption, political power concentration and conflict. It’s the same in the Middle East, Angola, Nigeria, Libya or Venezuela.Brazil has found an alternative that good for the people, the land, the environment and it’s democratic. After all everyone here can plant some sugarcane. It’s a big sweet grass.
Many blame oil speculators for this all time high, but this is hardly an argument. Oil producers are pumping as hard as they can, and there are no rising oil stocks in the world.
But on the demand side, the growth of emerging countries is unstoppable.
For the first time, millions of people in Brazil, China, and India are getting out of poverty thanks to their economical growth. More and more can they afford to build a house or to have a car, a refrigerator and other consumer goods. India’s car manufacturer Tata just presented a car that costs $ 2.300.
And those humanists that drive a beautiful and expensive hybrid car come and say: Stop developing now or you will ruin the planet. Don’t buy this new cheap car, just keep taking your five children to school on that old rusty bicycle of yours.
I think that keeping millions of people in poverty to save the environment is not the solution.
Solution lies in alternatives for oil. Another reason to find an alternative is because most of the oil reserves are located in the most unstable countries in the planet. Would you like to have your country dependent for always on people like Hugo Chavez, the Saudis, Gaddafi or those guys in Nigeria and Sudan?
Brazil has found an alternative fuel in sugarcane, a kind of big sweet grass originally from South East Asia, taken by Portuguese and Spanish explorers to Canarias and Azores Islands and then to the New World.
Brazil has been exporting sugar from sugarcane since the 1600’s.
In the 1970’s, when OPEC provoked a world oil crisis, Brazilian government started a program to produce ethanol from the fermentation of sugarcane saccharose.
In 1978, when oil represented 46% of the total Brazilian import, the first ethanol powered car was ready.
In 1986, 76% of the cars produced in Brazil were ethanol powered. Brazil produced on that year 12,3 billion liters of ethanol.
After those good years, oil prices went down, sugar prices went up and the use of ethanol as fuel was largely diminished.
However, the technology developed on those years on sugarcane production was fundamentally important to the moment Brazil is living now.
Since 2003, automobile industry is producing flex fuel cars. Cars that can use ethanol or gasoline or both together in the same motor. Today, 85% of the sales in the automobile industry in Brazil are flex fuel cars. The high oil prices have convinced investors that future lies in biofuels and the new boast of sugarcane industry is no longer a government program but an initiative of the private sector.
Today, Brazil is the number one in sugarcane production. The country produces 19% of the sugar and 33% of the ethanol produced in the world. In 2006, 422,9 million tons of sugarcane were harvested giving $ 6.2 billion in sugar exports and $ 1.6 billion in ethanol exports.
Showing off this huge potential, Brazil has frightened some competitors and has suddenly become a target of criticism from the international community because of the increase in sugarcane production.
First, Brazil has been accused of destroying the Amazon rainforest because of sugarcane production. That is a big lie. Pick up a map and find the state of São Paulo. It’s right there in the south. About 60% of Brazilian sugarcane production comes from there, about 2.000km from the rainforest..
Second, they say Brazil is causing food prices to rise all over the world because we are replacing cereals for sugarcane. Another big lie. Cereals production in Brazil has never been so high. Sugarcane industry is recuperating wasted soil from pastures, renewing it and increasing its production. The same sugarcane plant can produce for 5 years in a row. Every 5 years it has to be replaced by other plant like beans or soya or peanuts for at least one year, so all the surface cultivated of sugarcane will also be producing grains.
Brazil has 355 million hectares of arable lands, 80% of those are still available. From those arable lands, only 1% is used to produce sugarcane.
In other places however, especially in the US and Europe, the story is quite different, and that is why biofuels are getting a bad name.
Europe produces sugar and ethanol from sugar beet, at a cost more than 6 times higher than Brazil. Brazilian sugar is heavily taxed to protect the EU market. United States uses corn to produce ethanol, also heavily subsidized. While 1 hectare of corn gives 3.000 liters of ethanol, 1 hectare of sugarcane gives 7.500 liters. And Americans are already using 64,8% of their arable land, 3.7% of it just to produce corn for ethanol.
Europe and the United states are also trying to produce biodiesel from plants like soya, sunflower and colza. Some days ago, British newspaper The Guardian showed a document from the World Bank saying that about 5 million hectares of land were used for those cultures instead of wheat in the last in the last 3 years.
The World Bank also estimated that the rise in food prices was in about 75% due to biofuels, especially because corn and soya are being used not as food anymore, but as fuel. But it also said that Brazilian sugarcane expansion was not causing it.
Oxfam also just release a report where they say from all kinds of biofuel, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is the best. Rich countries should buy it instead of spending US$ 15 billion (only last year) in subsidies trying to produce their own biofuel.
So, instead of buying ethanol from Brazil (a suggestion from John McCain by the way) at a low cost, they make their tax payer pay subsides to their inefficient farmers to produce, pay again a higher price for their fuel and sugar and pay again if they want to export something. Of course, they don’t want to depend on other people for their sugar and fuel as much as they don’t want to depend on other people for their oil, but hey, Brazilians are much nicer people than Hugo Chavez or Gaddafi. And they want to continue that policy it’s ok, but don’t blame Brazilians if the world goes hungry.
Sugarcane is not making anyone hungry, protectionism is.
The other lie is that sugarcane is erasing small farmers from the map. Let me tell you a story that happened in my home town, Araraquara, state of São Paulo. A small farmer that received some land from the Brazilian Agrarian Reform Institute tried to do beans, watermelons, corn and was always losing money. He made a partnership with a ethanol industry that supplied him with plants, fertilizers and machines in exchange for part of his harvest. He had a profit of R$ 90.000 in 3 years, invested in poultry and has a farm with 21.000 birds. Other small farmers did the same. The Institute understood that the land should be used for grains and vegetables production, took the land back and gave to other landless peasants. There was a fight, people got hurt, houses were burn… That old socialist thinking of a small happy farmer family with a pig, a little cow and some vegetables is over. Small farmers have also the right to get income, doesn’t matter if it comes from sugarcane or soya or anything else.
Sugarcane industry gives more than a million direct jobs.
It produces ethanol and sugar.
The residues of the industry are burned to produce electricity, in a season where there is little rainfall and the reservoirs of hydroelectrical power plants are low.
Other residues from sugarcane industry are used as fertilizers in the fields.
Sugarcane plantations will take all the CO2 released by ethanol powered cars in the atmosphere.
It has been renewing wasted land and improving the income of millions of families in the Brazilian countryside.
It made Brazil self sustained in fuel.
Brazil can still increases its production of sugarcane, and beef and grains as well without destroying the rainforest.
In the developing world, finding oil in your country has been more of a curse rather then a blessing. Instead of been used to make life better for the people, it has been a great source of corruption, political power concentration and conflict. It’s the same in the Middle East, Angola, Nigeria, Libya or Venezuela.Brazil has found an alternative that good for the people, the land, the environment and it’s democratic. After all everyone here can plant some sugarcane. It’s a big sweet grass.
No comments:
Post a Comment