Facts, Myths and Future of Brazilian Ethanol (2)

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.