Cane ethanol is an alternative fuel that could benefit Florida

There are many misconceptions about ethanol and Brazil. The letter to the editor, "Cutting down rainforests to grow biofuels may be self-defeating" (Feb. 8), decrying the "hoopla" in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's excellent Feb. 5 feature, takes the mainstream America view of world environmental problems: that they are caused by selfish foreign countries, while we Americans are the guardians of the globe.

To link ethanol to the rainforest is inaccurate. The Amazon basin is one-half of Brazil's territory. Sugar cane for ethanol is not grown there, but in the savannah (cerrado), which constitutes most of the remaining half. The savannah, not the Amazon, is Brazil's agricultural powerhouse, but only half of it is under cultivation. Without even considering the Amazon, Brazil has the land to feed itself and much of the rest of the world and still produce biofuels.

"Rainforest" has become an American code word for dodging our own responsibility for the globe's environmental woes. We speak of the forest as "the lungs of the world," the global filter for greenhouse gases. But where do those gases come from? Not much from Brazil, not when compared to the United States. One state alone, California, emits more than all of Brazil. Is Brazil obligated to maintain its forest, at its own expense, as a filter system for the fallout from American consumerism, especially when the United States rejects international environmental initiatives, such as Kyoto?

When we are so arrogant, we cannot claim the tropical forests as "ours." The only rainforest that is "ours" is the Pacific Northwest, the world's largest temperate rainforest, which has long been given over to logging interests. Forgetting the "rain" part, we began leveling our eastern forests centuries ago. But that was then and this is now, and Brazil is being asked to do as we say, not as we did.

Brazil is in fact doing a great deal to preserve the Amazon. But it is an area equal to most of the western United States. How would we do if we had to patrol all of our western mountains, deserts and forests for poachers and squatters, even with satellites, infrared images and aircraft, as Brazil does? It's not so easy, and Brazil deserves support for what it is doing, not criticism.

Americans who follow the "rainforest" line when it comes to biofuels are buying into the "hoopla" of the American petroleum and corn industries, which have long shown themselves to be no friends of the environment. Domestic corn ethanol is a zero-sum game. Corn ethanol yields almost no net energy gain over the energy required to produce it, almost all of which comes from petroleum. Petroleum is simply being converted into ethanol, which is profitable only because of the 54-cent-per-gallon taxpayer-financed subsidy and the 51-cent-per-gallon import tariff. Brazilian cane ethanol, on the other hand, yields eight times the net energy of corn and requires only one-half the planted area.

Cane ethanol is a clean, renewable alternative fuel that could greatly benefit Florida, the United States and the globe. To share in the benefits, however, we must import it, as shown in the Sun-Sentinel's feature. Furthermore, under Gov. Charlie Crist's proposals, Florida could greatly benefit by becoming the ethanol import hub.

We Americans are blinded in our headlong rush to consume ever more and to bend the rest of the world to our "needs." We should slow down, face reality and employ all available means, principally reduction of consumption but also measures such as alternative fuels, to lessen our aggression against the globe.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-forum18ethanolsbfeb18,0,3858998.story

'Ethanol production Brazil is not causing deforestation in the Amazon

'Ethanol production in Brazil is not causing deforestation in the Amazon region,- says Peter Zuurbier, Associate Professor and Director of the Wageningen UR Latin America Office. According to him, the notion that sugarcane is displacing cattle and soybean production into the Amazon is inaccurate. 'The real problem lies in illegal deforestation and lack of property rights, as around 50 percent of the Amazon region has disputed titles and this is an invitation for timber companies- he says.

In an interview with Ethanol Statistics, Mr. Zuurbier tries to explain a dynamic process between illegal activities in the Amazon rainforest and the expansion of agricultural lands towards that region. NGO's often state that sugarcane production is displacing cattle and soybean production towards and into the Amazon, burning down the area to make it suitable for agriculture and pastures.

According to Mr. Zuurbier however, the process is slightly different. 'Well organized groups and corporations with questionable land titles, but also official land owners began to chop down large acreages of forest to trade timber, both legally and illegally- he says. 'Usually, after the empty strips of land were abandoned, cattle owners would move into these cheap lands. However, after 3 to 4 years of cattle breeding, the thin soil of the Amazon is completely useless without any form of fertilization and livestock owners usually move into the next abandoned area. Soybean farmers meanwhile replace the livestock in these areas, recognizing the opportunity to fertilize the area for soybean production.-

According to Mr. Zuurbier, the cause of deforestation and agricultural production in or near the Amzone, is simply illegal deforestation itself. The fact that Brazil still has questionable land titles, no set-aside policy and great difficulty to enforce existing laws to counter illegal timber trade, are the real reasons why the Amazon rainforest is in danger according to him.

Mr. Zuurbier made his comments in an interview with Ethanol Statistics, focussed specifically on the topic of the indirect effects of ethanol production in Brazil. In the article, he also discusses the steps that have been taken already, among which are Brazil's satellite monitoring system and self-enforcing regulation large commodity traders such as Cargill and ADM.

The entire interview, titled ‘Brazilian Ethanol and the Displacement of Cattle' can be found on

http://www.ethanolstatistics.com/Expert_Opinions/Brazilian_Ethanol_and_the_Displacement_of_Cattle_210108_1.aspx

Is ethanol everybodys fuel?

Near the vestiges of the first sugar factory in Brazil, built in 1877 with a sign in Latin over the entrance saying "Sweet is the Reward of Work," Danuza Gomes Da Silva swings a glinting knife as she makes her way down the length of a field cutting cane.

She bends to slice the sticks of young cane dropped by other workers from the top of a truck. She straightens, again and again. A band of 12 laborers like hers can plant about 10 acres a day. Sugar cane buds easily from the plowed furrows and it grows fast. But the work associated with it is hard.

Danuza, round-faced and soft-eyed, makes between $8 and $13 a day depending on her productivity. Aged 35, she has four young children. Only about 20 percent of the 7.5 million acres planted with sugar cane in Brazil is mechanized. The rest depends on manual labor like hers.

"I don't want to lose my job," she says, a smile on her face, the oversized cleaver in her hand.

Machines that plant and harvest are slowly spreading across the great expanse of Brazilian cane fields. But Danuza's harsh existence is a reminder that behind the global buzz over Brazil's cane-based ethanol production - the 21st century's environment-friendly bio-fuel par excellence - lurk enduring social problems.

Ethanol, renewable and relatively clean, is lovely. The life of the migrant Brazilian rural worker, finite and hot, is not.

Seldom has a country seen an image makeover quite as radical as Brazil's in recent years.

From the not-quite-serious land of samba, slums, soccer and smoking rain forests, it has become the realm of ahead-of-the-curve ethanol work, flex-fuel cars running on any combination of ethanol and gasoline, and a bio-fuel revolution that could deliver the world from ugly, $100-a-barrel oil.

Where the world once saw Pelé and poverty, it now sees a country where 80 percent of new cars run on ethanol or gasoline; all gasoline is sold in a mix that contains close to 25 percent ethanol, and ethanol accounts for over 40 percent of fuel consumption. These numbers make new U.S. targets that might replace about one sixth of gasoline consumption with ethanol by 2020 seem belated and meager.

Brazil, in other words, was busy seeing tomorrow while America viewed it as mired in the past, a place too frivolous to be futuristic.

In fact, both images hold some truth. Brazil has led the way in demonstrating the potential of ethanol, has vast land resources to develop the industry, uses sugar-based ethanol whose productivity is far greater than U.S. corn ethanol being developed at the cost of higher food prices, and has shown the feasibility of a flex-fuel auto fleet.

But a day spent visiting the cane-production facilities of CBAA, a major sugar and ethanol manufacturer, revealed the hardships and difficult social conditions from which these achievements were wrested.

A cane field opposite an area overrun by landless peasants had been burnt in an act of arson. A man searched forlornly for a horse he'd left to feed and then lost in the cane plantations. Outside a makeshift dormitory for migrant workers, men were slumped under clothes hung to dry.

"The social situation is complicated," said Aristoteles Ramos Cardoso, a director. "We're near the city, we need labor, there's no shortage of criminals."

If the vast potential of sugar cane ethanol is to be realized, in Brazil as in poor African countries, its development must come in ordered ways that allow the likes of Danuza and her children to benefit. A new fuel should not carry what has often been oil's curse: the enrichment of a narrow elite.

This will depend on several things: the labor standards adopted by the growing hordes of international investors drawn to ethanol; the opening up of the global trading system to this bio-fuel that many poor tropical countries will be able to produce; and the development of a global traded commodity market in ethanol with established norms. Without such standards, still lacking, development will stall. So will social progress.

"The United States could really generate wealth for those who need it, while freeing itself from oil dependence," said José Pessoa, the chief executive of CBAA. "It should be buying my ethanol rather than imposing tariffs. It should be helping to develop the sugar-cane industry in Africa. This would be the intelligent way and the best for the environment."

America can indeed do its part, not least by freeing up its ethanol and sugar markets to imports. So can Brazil, by seeing a 35-year-old woman in the sun, her children in need of education, and all the myriad people like them, amid the billowing CO2-lite clouds of ethanol euphoria.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/09/opinion/edcohen.php