Driving on drink

Europe’s sweet tooth once made Brazil’s sugar plantation owners so rich that they would send their dirty laundry to Portugal for cleaning. More than three centuries later, Brazil’s sugar industry is again tipped to boom.

European demand is once more the cause. Only this time, it is a taste for clean energy that is promising to drive up prices.

Government regulations require all the petrol sold in Brazil to be mixed with at least 20% ethanol, a major by-product of the nation’s sugar cane crop. Today over half (52.5%) of the country’s total sugar harvest ends up in the nation’s 30,000-strong network of bioethanol petrol pumps.

..Brazil’s sugar industry could also face opposition closer to home. Brazilian campaign groups blame sugar plantations for a multiplicity of sins, including soil degradation, deforestation, urbanisation and poor labour conditions.

“Ethanol is good for the climate, but it could be disastrous for the environment if it [sugar production] spread without controls”, warns Carlos Rittl, climate campaigner for Greenpeace Brazil.

“We don’t want sugar cane to become a new soya for the Amazon region”, he adds, in reference to the 10,000 square miles of Amazonian forest lost to soya bean production in 2004.

Guardian