TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Ethanol Production In Brazil Has Dark Side

ADVERTISEMENT

The Associated Press

Published: October 2, 2007

BATATAIS, Brazil - As dawn cracks over seemingly endless fields of sugar cane, a ragged army of men and women sharpen their machetes to harvest the raw material for Brazil's 'white gold.'

With machinelike precision, the cane cutters gather five 8-foot tall stalks in the crook of one arm, bend over and cut them down with three swift machete whacks - a process they will repeat over and over again for as long as 12 hours a day.

'By the end of the day your entire body hurts so much you think you are going to die' says cane cutter Raimundo Gomes da Silva. 'But it is all we know how to do, so we will continue doing the same thing, day after day, until we drop dead.'

Brazil's pioneering use of sugar cane-based ethanol, which fuels about 30 percent of the country's automobiles, has made Latin America's largest country a global leader alternative energy.

Getting less attention is the squalid labor conditions of nearly half a million people who toil in the fields six days a week to supply the cane to the nation and a growing export market.

Brazil is the world's No. 1 exporter of ethanol, shipping 900 million gallons of the fuel additive abroad in 2006 and generating revenue of $1.6 billion. Exports have risen mostly because of increased demand from European countries that find it cheaper to import the product from Brazil than to make it from wheat and sugar beets.

'Ethanol is making a lot of people in this country very rich,' said Miguel Ferreira, president of the union representing cane cutters in Batatais, a town in Sao Paulo state's vast sugarcane belt. 'But all the cane cutters have seen are long hours of backbreaking work for very little pay.'

The most productive cutters can earn a meager $420 a month. Many earn even less.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT