BRUSSELS – On the 5
th and 6
th of July, presidents, ministers
and business leaders from around the world gathered in Brussels to develop an international
approach to reap the potential benefits of biofuels, while ensuring sustainable
development and avoiding the creation of new risks. Hosting European commissioner
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, as well as many others, particularly emphasized the importance
of sustainable production in countries such as Brazil. Keynote speaker and president
of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, as well as UNICA’s president Marcos Jank, addressed
the mistaken notion that Brazil is using the Amazon region to produce ethanol as
well as other social and environmental issues. According to José Roberto Moreira,
President of the Biomass Users Network and member of the executive council of Cenbio,
says this shows that conferences such as this are important to provide the general
public as well as politicians with real facts and the proper perspective.
Last month, the first of two articles from Mr. Moreira was published titled “The facts, myths and future of Brazilian ethanol production”. It addressed displacement of cattle into the Amazon, the sustainability of energy production in general and discussed the most important sustainability criteria, one by one. In this second article, Mr. Moreira explains how Brazil is able to expand its production in a sustainable way, in which areas it can do so and how developing countries can benefit from a global ethanol market.
The best states for sustainable expansion
Professor Moreira presents an honest and balanced view of the Brazilian potential in economic, environmental and social aspects, showing it is more than capable of producing in a sustainable way. But what states are than ideally suited for further expansion? “That depends on the weight that you give the economic, social and environmental aspects, but in my opinion you should give equal weights to all three aspects. The state of Matto Grosso do Sul scores very well on all three. It has the climatic and economic conditions for efficient production and the potential to provide better social conditions in the surrounding area’s. Additionally, since there is a fantastic extension of land that is being used as pasture with very low productivity, environmental aspects will also suffer very little if this is intensified.
But if you are relatively more tied to social aspects you should consider the northeast of Brazil. The area’s hot climate is not ideally suited for sugarcane production and yield per hectare is well below the levels in the south of Brazil. But since it is one of the poorest areas in Brazil, the social aspect can be very important there. The amount of land available in the states of Alagoas, Sergipe and Pernambuco is limited, unless you rely on irrigation systems. Still, an area in these states located up to 200 km from the ocean receives sufficient rainfall to grow sugarcane efficiently. This area is roughly the size of São Paulo state, where 60% of the Brazilian sugarcane grows. I would estimate that Pernambuco could produce an additional 2 million hectares of sugarcane and Alagoas and Sergipe together another million hectares. Since Brazil currently use about 3 million hectares of sugarcane for ethanol production, the northeast alone could double the current production capacity, while greatly improving social conditions and avoiding environmental issues. The problem is however that we haven’t got sugarcane varieties that are productive enough in such a climate”. As a natural consequence of this last conclusion we can again return to this same issue when considering the Amazon area as a potential source of ethanol.
Ethanol and the benefits for developing countries
President Lula Da Silva emphasized the opportunities that a global ethanol market offers to developing countries in Africa, Central-America and the Caribbean. According to him it is a chance for them to rise from a state of poverty. Environmentalist claim however that large volumes of ethanol production will compete with food and raise food prices, often referring to the increase in tortilla prices when the U.S. increased it’s ethanol demand. “I strongly object to this. As a scientist you cannot take one event that happened six months ago and than say that this is probably the trend. As you can see, the prices have come done as the farmers in the United States planted 5 million acres of extra corn. This is a frequent issue: as prices go up, farmers plant more crops, they overproduce in the following years and prices go down. You have to wait a little more to see whether this is a long term disturbance of the market. This could be just a small disturbance and for me it sounds that way
hunger is not caused by the lack of food in the world, but the lack of money to buy it. The economic gains for developing countries will offset the potential short term losses. The problem is that you should have some kind of social program, because for some people the increase of 10-20% in the price of food will be catastrophic. So you have to devise a social program that will help these people to survive under these conditions. But for sure the average gain of the society will be higher than the loss.
© Ethanol Statistics 2008