BRAZIL-DEVELOPMENT: Sugar Gets a Bad Rap

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 4 1996 (IPS) - Sugar cane, once hailed as the answer to Brazil’s fuel shortage, now is being fingered as a source of economic, environmental and labor problems.

The sugar cane, converted into fuel alcohol, has been credited with improving air quality in the large cities but its cultivation has polluted rural growing areas, requires huge government subsidies, and the industry is accused of exploiting child labour.

So the National Program for Fuel Alcohol (Proalcohol), created during an oil shortage crisis in 1975 as a national and renewable gasoline substitute, is seeking a way out of its own crisis.

The fuel alcohol program is not viable because “alcohol is too expensive a fuel” at 60 dollars a barrel compared to 20 dollars for gasoline, said José Conrado de Souza, director of the Petrobras government oil company’s engineers’ association.

Brazil developed the Proalcohol program at a time when oil was forecast to quadruple in price by the end of the century. But this proved wrong, and the country later abandoned its plans to develop domestic fuel self-sufficiency.

But the expensive alcohol program has already cost 11 billion dollars in government subsidies and continues to consume 2.4 billion dollars in annual subsidies, according to Petrobras, which provides two-thirds of this funding and is seeking relief from this burden, especially now that it has lost its fuel monopoly and will have to compete with other suppliers.

The alcohol distilleries owe the Bank of Brazil close to 4.5 billion dollars in overdue loans. Industry and Commerce Minister Dorothea Werneck acknowledged that only 66 of the country’s 340 distilleries were financially sound, and says she is coordinating the search for a solution to the industry’s problems.

Despite these bleak statistics, the government would like to save Proalcohol and is studying imposing a “green tax” on gasoline to subsidize its alcohol substitute.

Indeed, the main argument for alcohol fuel is an environmental one. Planning Minister José Serra declared that Sao Paulo air pollution would be impossible to endure without alcohol and experts agree that alcohol pollutes less than gasoline.

Congressional deputy Helio Rosas also noted that the fuel alcohol program employs 1.3 million people directly and another three million indirectly. He asserted that the government had an obligation to keep the distilleries from going bankrupt because they were built as part of an official program.

Rosas noted that 70 distilleries had already gone under with the loss of 200,000 jobs and warned that alcohol producers would demand indemnification from the courts if Proalcohol is dissolved.

Indeed, there is strong political pressure to retain the program. Brazil’s leading national “party” – a coalition of more than 200 deputies and senators who range from the conservative rural oligarchy to the nationalist and environmentalist left – supports the industry.

But the Abring Foundation supported by Brazil’s toy industry and other non-governmental organizations opposes reviving Proalcohol, arguing that public resources should not be used to support an industry that takes children out of school and subjects them to hard, often crippling, labor.

Although Brazil prohibits minors under the age of 14 from working, the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (Contag) estimates that at least 500,000 children and adolescents aged seven to 17 work in cane, sugar and alcohol production.

A study conducted by the Josué de Castro Center two years ago found that 58 percent of the child and adolescent cane-cutters in northeast Pernambuco state had suffered accidents at work, most of them caused by machetes and sickles. They also earned very little or nothing and had no labor rights or protection.

As for the environmental issue, engineer Conrado de Souza claims alcohol is no improvement over gasoline because both fuels emit similar amounts of gases while burning alcohol produces three times the amount of aldehydes, which can cause cancer.

Alcohol production also creates large quantities of liquid waste that contaminate rivers, while burning the cane crop to facilitate harvesting causes air pollution in the growing regions.

The soot and smoke that blacken the sky during the burning season cause discomfort and respiratory problems and may also cause cancer of the salivary glands, says the Ribeirao Preto School of Medicine.

The city of Ribeirao Preto is located in the heart of Brazil’s sugar and alcohol producing region 300 kilometers from Sao Paulo. Its city council recently approved a resolution demanding an end to the burnings and the substitution of machinery for machete cane harvesting within six years.