The Dark Side of Biofuels: Horror in the 'Brazilian California'
By: Raúl Zibechi (IRC)
Publication Date: 26/06/2007 
Theme: Food Sovereignty Country / es:
Brazil Brazil bet to become a great emerging power thanks to the leadership that keeps in the production of biofuels. The price of this ambition they pay the environment and the cane cutters, who remain the invisible part of the story. "When the plane passed that bath of poison throwing my father was all wet, was very ill with the poison you take to the cane. Is destroying many young people, "says a cane cutter in the region of Ribeirao Preto, São Paulo state." People work and they give a paper to buy at the supermarket.
People do not see money, you only see the account of what should be ', said a worker from the same region, where seven out of ten cane cutters did not finish high school primaria1.Otros cutters say they are cheated by the scales control patterns, and calculate that they have to carry 110 kilos for the scale dial 100. Most were plucked from the Northeast by promises that would earn very high salaries. Working conditions are reminiscent of many analysts moderate the period of slavery. But President Lula said at the G-8 Summit that biofuels have "enormous potential to generate jobs and income 'and' provide a real growth option sustentable'2. Behind a language 'politically correct' is hidden a reality that is called to destroy the Amazon, destroying millions of young bodies and promises lucrative business to investors.
The very name biofuels appears to be intended to promote confusion. Jo ã o Pedro Stédile, leader of the landless in Brazil, notes that the defenders of ethanol "use the prefix bio to imply that it is a good thing ', so they prefer to speak clearly and are called' agrofuels', because energy is produced in the four centuries atrásSegún agro3.Volver former governor of S ã o Paulo, Claudio Lembo, agrofuels monoculture to be extended throughout the country. Although a conservative member of the Liberal Front Party (now Democratic Party), believes that Brazil 'traveled five hundred years to return to the same place' I had as a Portuguese colony.
In his view, the land devoted to agriculture will be lost when used for sugar cane and repeat the story of four centuries, when "thousands were expelled from their communities by the leviathan of monoculture, which creates wealth concentrada'4 . Looking more closely at the working conditions of cane cutters receive a terrible world that should give pause to those who are enthusiastic about the proposal to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. According to various reports, around one million people work in industry, of which 500 thousand are in the agricultural sector.
About 80% of the collection cane is manual. The workers only get paid if they reach the performance required by employers, which is situated in the region of Ribeirao Preto in about 12 tons per day, double that of 1980. If they fail, they are not paid nada5.Para achieve this performance must work about 10 to 12 hours a day, but sometimes 14, many of them under a hot sun. Many parents take their young children to help them reach that goal production. Although the number of working children has decreased, in 1993 one in four cane cutters were between seven and 17 years in the state of Pernambuco, and many received no salary.
In the last two harvests killed 14 people by overwork. The cutters are recruited in other regions and must live in the same estate, in cabins with no mattresses, no water and no kitchen should cook in cans over small bonfires and food have to buy them in your own hacienda at prices far above mercado.La the cane is cut after being burned, which facilitates harvesting but gravely harms the environment and causes lung disease. In the municipality of Piracicaba, S ã o Paulo, hospitalizations of children with respiratory problems increase by 21% during periods of cane burning.
For every ten tons the cutter must make about 72 thousand blows with his machete, do leg curls 36 000 lose about ten liters of water per day and walk ten miles a day while they work. The monthly salary ranges between 150 and 200 dollars a month. According to the sociologist Francisco de Oliveira half-life of the cutters is less than the slaves of the colonia6.El Labor Minister Carlos Lupi, admitted before the International Labour Conference in Geneva that part of cane production in Brazil work is done with degrading and in poor condition 'work without protection and even lose the dedos'7. Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, who has been studying for 30 years working in the cane fields, ensures that 45% of the cutters from the Northeast. The
migrants are preferred by employers because being away from their families support the imposition without protest, and after seven months that the harvest back to their villages, so they have more difficulty organizing progresoPoco sindicatos8.Eso called by little harvesting machines are being introduced that do the work of a hundred people. That is why the farmers have increased productivity demands to the cutters. Require them to cut the cane closer to the ground, as do the machines.
The result is that now choose younger and younger workers who receive a dollar tonelada.El business daily Jornal do Valor explains how to fall into servitude: "There an intermediary of the workforce that runs the poorer states, especially North and Northeast. Choose younger. Upon entering the bus to go to the city where the contract, the cutter gets its first debt to transportation. The middleman earns 60 reals (30 dollars) for each worker who has.
is not uncommon that is also responsible for the sale of the first goods that need workers. They become 'owners' of such labor as debts are acumulan'9. The expansion of cane cultivation destroys the social. In the region where the small city of Delta, in the state of Minas Gerais, were planted 300 000 hectares in the last four years. The city has five thousand people who become 10 000 at harvest. According to a report by the newspaper Correio Braziliense the small town began to record homicide rates unimaginable before the multiplication of sugarcane crops. Many girls are kidnapped for prostitution fat in the region, which reach about 20 thousand cutters each year.
cutters swelling the peripheries of small towns where it multiplies and alcohol consumption crack.La expansion and modernization of the sugarcane industry overflows towns and municipalities. José Eustaquio da Silva, mayor of Delta, admitted that "the municipality is in collapse. Health posts, hospitals and schools are overcrowded, and the worst is that along with the workers come all sorts of people and bandits. " In Delta there is not even a hotel, but there are 27 brothels.
journalists discovered that several personalities of the municipality are involved in child trafficking and pedophilia with children of cane cutters. Intermediaries (which they call 'cats') are armed and often impose their ley.Stédile always put the same example to illustrate the social problems generated by the monoculture. 'The municipality of Ribeirao Preto in the center of S ã o Paulo is considered the' Brazilian California 'by its high technological development in the cane. 30 years ago, this city produced all its food, had peasants in the interior and, in fact, was a rich region with equitable income distribution. Now is a vast plantation, with about 30 plants that control all the land. The city has 100 000 people living in favelas (540 000 inhabitants of the municipality). The prison population is 3.813 people, adults only, while the population living on agriculture and has worked there is only 2,412 people counting the children.
model of society is the cane monoculture. There are more people in prison who dedicated to agriculture! '10. The harvest of 2007 will be another 'breakthrough' technology: for the first time genetically modified sugar cane harvest. It is lighter and removes more water so give large profits to the entrepreneurs. But workers will have to cut three more times to reach the 10 toneladas.En this region fired entrepreneurs every so often a lot of cutters to keep the best. These are called "productivity champions" who can cut up to 20 tons per day, with a monthly average of 12 to 17 tons by Day 11. As workers suffer convulsions, cramps, spinal pain and tendonitis, as well as the frequent power cuts, business found a 'technical solution'. The plants distributed in a free electrolyte and vitamin repositor appropriate for athletes or workers with intense physical activity.
cutters in many plants consume this product before starting work. 'The pains of the body disappears, the cramps diminish and productivity increases, "says Pereira Novaes. The problem is that every month they have to increase the dose. "With serums and medicines remains high productivity demanded by the cane. As a process of 'natural selection', the strongest survive. But the question is: how and how long they survive? Serums and medicines can be seen as expression of the paradox of a kind of modernization and expansion of sugarcane crops wasted labor that makes them flourish, "insists Pereira Novaes.
No official data but the truth is that many young workers who retire for disability and dozens of deaths from fatigue in the 'Brazilian California. "GanadoresEn Brazil Large cane production began in 1550, but its great expansion occurred from 1970 driven by rising oil prices. The vegetation of the Atlantic coast was halved, being the most affected by this expansion, but now the cane fields advance toward the center-west, where it is expected the rich Cerrado biome will disappear by 2030 at the hands of monoculture. In the next seven years Brazil will double its ethanol production and will produce nearly 50% more cane, which is building a hundred other plants for 2010.
there are not things. The National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES) intends that Brazil is able to control 50% of global ethanol market. This involves passing the 17 billion gallons today to 110 billion per year for what will be necessary to plant some 80 million hectares. In other words, destroy the Amazon. The government has taken this sector as their main development strategy. BNDES, which has more resources than any other regional bank including the Bank, estimated to invest six billion dollars in factories and plantations caña.Pero Brazil wants to expand agrofuels across the region.
immediate plans are to bring production to Central America and the Caribbean that already have FTAs \u200b\u200bwith the United States (such as CAFTA), to evade import tariffs maintained by Washington. 'The objective is to these countries nearly finished product, "says the weekly adventures," to complete the process in those nations and from there enter the U.S. market. " The Brazilian bank finances the investments in those countries, but also is negotiating a stake of up to 30% in projects Stédile centroamericanos.En view in the ethanol project where three large sections: "The oil companies (who want to reduce dependence on oil), companies in the agro (like Bunge, Cargill, Monsanto) who want to continue to monopolize the world market for agricultural products, 'and now the transnational capital that makes "an alliance with the landowners in the south, especially in Brazil, to use large tracts of land for production of agrocombutisbles'12. The picture is not encouraging is looming. Instead of pushing to change the pattern of consumption and the energy matrix, in particular in transport, big investors like George Soros and corporations like Cargill are positioning themselves in the Brazilian production of ethanol to increase their profits. Global warming and working conditions of cane cutters do not fall into their concerns.
Notes:
1) Testimonies collected by the Pastoral Land Commission and reproduced by Núcleo Amigos da Terra Brasil, p. 15.
2) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, op. cit.
3) Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
4) State of São Paulo, March 13, 2007, in
www.estadao.com.br
5) All data from core study of the Amigos da Terra Brasil.
6) Francisco de Oliveira, Folha de São Paulo, May 27, 2007.
7) O Estado de São Paulo, June 11, 2007.
8) Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, Humanitas Institute magazine interview in
www.unisinos.br Unisinos 9) Jornal do Valor, Sao Paulo, May 17, 2007.
10) Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
11) José Roberto Pereira Novaes, op. cit
12) Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
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