Necrofuels
By Frei Betto Read Spanish Version
Taken from Cubadebate (July 19, 2007)
The Greek prefix bios means life; the prefix nekros, death. Does fuel extracted from plants bring life? When I was in primary school, the history of Brazil was divided into cycles: logging, gold mining, cane cutting, coffee picking, etc. That classification is not at all capricious. Now we are in the cycle of agrofuels, incorrectly called biofuels.
This new cycles is provoking an increase in the price of food, already denounced by Fidel Castro. A study by the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OCED) and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), published on July 4, indicates that "biofuels will have a strong impact in agriculture from 2007 to 2016."
Farm prices will be above the average for the past 10 years. Grains will cost 20 percent to 50 percent more. In Brazil, the people paid three times more for food in the first half of this year than in the same period in 2006. We’re going to feed vehicles and withhold food from humans. There are 800 million automotive vehicles in the world. The same number of people lives in chronic malnutrition.
What is troublesome is that none of the governments enthused over agrofuels questions the model of individual transportation, as if the earnings of the automotive industry were untouchable.
The prices of food already are rising fast in Europe, China, India and the United States.
Agroflation — the inflation of agricultural products — this year will reach 4 percent in the U.S., compared with a 2.5 percent increase in 2006. Because U.S. corn is almost all set aside for the production of ethanol, the price of poultry rose 30 percent in the past 12 months. And milk will go up 14 percent this year. In Europe, butter already is 40 percent more expensive. In Mexico, there were demonstrations against a 60-percent increase in the price of tortillas, which are made of corn.
Corn-based ethanol made in the U.S. led to a doubling of the price of corn in one year. It is not that the Yanks like corn so much (except in popcorn). But corn is an essential component in the feeding of pigs, cattle and poultry, which elevates the cost of raising those animals and the cost of derivatives like meat, milk, butter and eggs.
Because the market is king, what’s happening in the U.S. is also happening in Brazil with sugar cane: producers of soy, cotton and other farm products abandon their traditional crops and take up the new agricultural "gold": corn in the U.S., cane in Brazil. That has repercussions on the prices of soy, cotton and the entire food chain, considering that the U.S. is responsible for half of the world’s grain exports.
In the U.S., lobbyists for the producers of cattle, pigs, goats and poultry are pressuring Congress to reduce the subsidy to the producers of corn-based ethanol. They would prefer to see cane-based ethanol imported from Brazil, so as to avoid any further increases in the prices of animal feed.
Malnutrition today threatens 52.4 million Latin Americans and Caribbeans, or 10 percent of the population of the continent. With the expansion of the crop fields destined for the production of ethanol, there is a risk that ethanol will become a necrofuel — a predator of human lives.
In Brazil this year, the government punished farmers whose cane fields depended on slave labor. And everything indicates that the expansion of that crop in the Brazilian southeast will push the production of soy into the Amazonia, causing the deforestation of a region that has already lost an area the size of the 14-state territory of Alagoas.
The production of cane in Brazil is historically notorious for the overexploitation of labor, the destruction of the environment, and the misappropriation of public resources. The big mills are characterized by concentrating land for the cultivation of a single crop intended for export. In general, they utilize migrant labor, the boyas-frias (farm workers who do not own land) who have no labor rights. The workers are paid a minimal sum for the amount of cane they cut, not for the number of hours they work. And even so, they have no control over the weighing of the cane they produce.
Some are obliged to cut 15 tons of cane per day. That enormous effort causes serious health problems, such as muscle cramps and tendinitis that affect the spine and the feet. Most of the contracts are made through intermediaries or the so-called "gatos," dealers in slave or semi-slave labor. After 1850, a slave would cut cane for 15 to 20 years; today, the excessive amount of work has reduced that period to about 12 years.
Bush’s and Lula’s enthusiasm over ethanol has led Alagoan and Sao Paulo mills to compete for every inch of land in the Mining Triangle. According to reporter Amaury Ribeiro Jr., 300,000 hectares of cane were planted in less than four years in land previously used for grazing and agriculture. The creation of 10 new mills next to Uberaba generated 10,000 jobs and boosted the production of alcohol in the state of Minas Gerais from 630 million liters in 2003 to 1.7 billion this year.
The migration of unskilled labor to the cane fields — 20,000 boyas-frias per year — produces not only an increase in slums but also more murders, drug trafficking, and trade in children and teenagers for prostitution.
The Brazilian government needs to free itself from its Colossus syndrome (the famous painting by Goya). Before turning the country into a huge canebrake and dream about nuclear power, it should prioritize sources of alternative energy that are abundant in Brazil, such as hydraulic, solar and wind power. And it should make sure to feed the long-suffering hungry people, instead of enriching the "heroic" owners of mills.
Writer Frei Betto is the author of "Calendar of Power" and other books. This article was originally published in Portuguese in the newspaper Jornal Estado de Minas. The translation into English is by Progreso Weekly.
