Food scarcity not linked to ethanol, asserts Brazil

04 June 2009

Firmly defending its biofuel policy, the Brazilian government told the Ethanol Summit 2009 in Sao Paulo this wek that the production of biofuels does not increase food prices.

''Ethanol cannot be the scapegoat for the failure of international organisations, because the production and use of ethanol were not and will not be responsible for the prices of agricultural primary materials,'' presidential chief of staff Dilma Rousseff said at the inauguration of one of the world's largest gatherings of the international biofuels industry.

Rousseff emphasised that biofuels have made it possible for Brazil to derive 46 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, compared with a global average of 12 per cent. Brazil has a fleet of more than seven million flex-fuel automobiles, which allow the burning of sugar-based ethanol, gasoline or a mixture of the two, and even regular gas has to contain 25 per cent ethanol.

''Ethanol is our priority, since it offers great economic possibilities in the creation of jobs and in the fight against climate change,'' President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's top aide said. She recalled that 30 years ago, when the production of ethanol was begun on a large scale in Brazil, the country produced 3,000 litres per year per hectare from sugar cane, a figure that currently has been hiked to 7,500 litres per hectare.

''In these 30 years, with the use of ethanol, we've stopped the emission of 850 million tons of carbon-containing gas,'' she said.

With regard to the criticism about slave labour on the sugar cane plantations, Rousseff said that in ''the coming days'' the government will announce a labour protocol signed by businessmen and workers that will benefit 500,000 peasants.