Breeding rural poverty and environmental degradation.

• Author: Kenfield, Isabella
• Position: Biodevastation

On January 22 the Lula administration announced it will increase federal funding for Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry by almost $6 billion over the next four years. One day later, President George W. Bush declared in the State of the Union address his goal to reduce US use of gasoline 20% by the year 2017.

The general response in Brazil to Bush's announcement was overwhelmingly positive. Luis Fernando Furlan, Minister of Industry, Development, and Commerce, was quoted in the Gazeta Mercantil as saying he received Bush's announcement "with applause."

"It is a fantastic business opportunity," Luis Carlos Correa Carvalho, an industry consultant, told Reuters. "We have never had such a great opportunity for the substitution of petroleum."

The United States is currently the largest importer of Brazilian ethanol. In 2006 it imported 1.74 billion liters, or 58% of the total three billion liters that Brazil exported. For the United States to reach Bush's target reduction of gasoline use, the country will need an additional 135 billion liters of ethanol annually. Because it will not be able to produce the entire amount, no doubt a large portion will come from Brazil.

Brazil is the global leader in ethanol exports. In 2006, the country exported about 19% of the total 16 billion liters it produced, providing 70% of the world's supply.

This amount will soon increase. A partnership between the Ministry of Science and Technology and the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo is currently conducting a study to plan Brazil's ethanol exports as a substitute for 10% of the global use of gasoline in 20 years.

If this plan is successful, the country's ethanol exports will total 200 billion liters by 2025. The geographic area planted with sugarcane will increase from 6 million to 30 million hectares.

Is ethanol the solution or the problem?

Many citizen organizations in Brazil are concerned that what appears to be an economic panacea may be a social and ecological disaster. They claim that as the industry expands and more hectares are planted monocropping sugarcane, existing problems in rural areas of landlessness, hunger, unemployment, environmental degradation, and agrarian conflicts will be exacerbated.

A recent declaration from the Forum of Resistance to Agribusinesses, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) throughout South America, states, "The implementation of the model of production and export of biofuels represents a grave threat to our region, our natural resources, and the sovereignty of our people."

There is concern that while expansion of the ethanol industry may boost Brazil's GDP and some Brazilians will become very wealthy in the process, it is likely the livelihoods of many Brazilians, especially the rural poor, will be subordinated to maintain US consumption.

The Forum states that,

The era of biofuels will reproduce and legitimize the logic of the occupation of rural areas by multinational agribusiness...