Brazil: Biofuel projects do not affect food production or Amazon, report says
[ 2008-08-21
]
Sao Paulo, Brazil, 21 Aug – Biofuel production in Brazil will have no effect on food production or the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest over the next few years, according to a report published Tuesday in Sao Paulo.
Drawn up by researcher Fábio Silveira, of Brazil’s RC Consultores, the report showed that Brazil would continue to have joint leadership of the sector, along with the United States, over the next decade.
"It is possible to triple Brazilian ethanol production without having any impact on the price of food or threatening the Amazon rainforest,” the author said in his presentation of the report in Sao Paulo.
Currently, plantations of sugar cane, the raw material used to produce ethanol, occupy just 3 percent of Brazil's total agricultural area.
The rise in production could be carried out by expanding the current planting area, particularly in the central-south of the country, some 2,000 kilometres from the Amazon.
The report showed that world biofuel production, such as of ethanol and biodiesel, was expected to total 90 billion litres this year, or five-fold the amount produced in 2000.
The United States and Brazil are currently responsible for 81 percent of world biofuel production, followed by the European Union, India and China.
Brazil however is the only country with the potential to become and exporter due to an abundance of land and the greater productivity of ethanol made from sugar cane, as compared to ethanol produced from maize or beet.
Brazilian ethanol production is expected to rise from 22.3 billion litres last year to 50 billion litres in 2015, according to the report’s projections.
Consumption, in its turn, will rise to 32 billion litres per year, which would leave Brazil with a surplus of 18 billion litres for export in 2015.
This year Brazil is expected to export around 4 billion litres of ethanol, up on the 3.5 billion litres it exported in 2007, specifically to the United States, Europe, Japan and the Caribbean.
The rise in Brazilian ethanol production will be the result of investment of around 25 billion reais in the sector over the next few years. (macauhub)
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