Brazilian sugarcane industry not happy with "Deadly Brew" documentary
This past week, Bloomberg Television aired a documentary on the Brazilian ethanol industry called "Deadly Brew: The Human Toll of Ethanol." With a name like that, you can probably guess that the filmmakers have a certain viewpoint on the way ethanol is made from sugarcane in Brazil. Well, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) is not happy with the film, and has put out a statement (available after the break) that calls the movie "Dangerously Misleading and Out-of-Context."
UNICA has 101 member companies, and the group's president and CEO, Marcos Jank, calls "Deadly Brew" seriously out-of-date. Jank said that, "Bloomberg appears more interested in showing impressive footage of a fire burning in the night than explaining that this is how straw is cleared virtually wherever sugarcane is harvested in the world." The statement also includes a list of what UNICA calls "misrepresentations" in the film. You can read all these claims after the jump.
I haven't seen the film and I haven't been to Brazil to see the conditions for myself, but my guess is that we'll get a response from the Deadly Brew team in the near future.
Related:
- Bloomberg to air documentary about Brazilian ethanol worker labor conditions
- São Paulo searching for cleaner ethanol through mechanization
Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association Considers Bloomberg TV Report on Sugar and Ethanol Industry 'Dangerously Misleading and Out-of-Context'
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- A report called "Deadly Brew," aired on Thursday, Jan. 24 by Bloomberg Television, is a dangerously misleading and out-of-context representation of Brazil's sugar and ethanol industry, according to the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).
"The report relies on isolated incidents, flawed data and unsubstantiated allegations. Not surprisingly, it arrives at unbalanced and inappropriate conclusions that bear no resemblance to the industry as it is today," says UNICA President and CEO Marcos Jank.
The report is seriously out-of-date according to Jank, as it not only omits wide-ranging advances in labor conditions and relations between workers and employers, but also chooses to portray industry efforts to introduce mechanization and end the manual harvest in a gradual and orderly manner as a problem and not a solution. At the same time, the report strives to criticize the manual harvest itself.
"Bloomberg appears more interested in showing impressive footage of a fire burning in the night than explaining that this is how straw is cleared virtually wherever sugarcane is harvested in the world," says Jank. The fact that close to 40% of the Brazilian harvest is already mechanized is not even mentioned, while signed agreements between the industry and labor unions that have brought significant improvements to worker transportation, transparency in payment methods and protective equipment standards were equally ignored.
And while nobody in the industry will argue that problems still exist, they must be put in the right context, something the Bloomberg report fails to do as it focuses on examples far removed from the accepted norm in the Brazilian sugar and ethanol industry, in a clear attempt to imply that exceptions reflect the entire industry.
A partial list of misrepresentations in the report includes:
- The completely unsubstantiated statement that conditions have deteriorated while ethanol has expanded. For example, close to 95% of all field workers involved with UNICA member companies are documented workers, with labor and social security benefits, which puts the sector ahead of nearly all others in the Brazilian economy in that respect. On average, workers are paid about double the current Brazilian minimum wage, which places them among the best paid in Brazilian agriculture;
- The report portrays all cane cutters as migrant workers from lower income regions in the country, which is not the case anywhere in Brazil. Most cane cutters are from the area where they work;
- There are close to one million workers in the industry throughout Brazil, not 500,000 as the report says. About 400,000 are cane cutters. In the state of Sao Paulo, the heart of the industry and base of UNICA's membership, there are 189,000 cane cutters, of whom 40% are migrant workers from other states;
- There is no minimum amount a cane cutter must produce per day. Cutters are guaranteed a minimum daily fee regardless of how much they cut, and the final amount paid to each cutter is based on a pre-negotiated amount per ton;
- Numbers without context may sound impressive in political campaigns but don't amount to credible journalism, and are often used to distort viewers' impressions. The report mentions accident numbers that appear high but are outdated, and doesn't refer to the latest Labour Ministry statistics showing accidents in the sugar and ethanol industry falling from 11,000 in 1999 to 8,000 in 2005, even as the number of workers has grown;
- The report also mentions an outdated death total, ignoring the latest available Labour Ministry figures, which show that in 2005, 17 workers died on the job or while being transported to their work locations. That represents 0.004% of 414,000 cane cutters throughout Brazil;
- It should be noted that contrary to what the Bloomberg report implies on several occasions, there is not a single case where the death of a field worker from the sugar and ethanol sector in Brazil has been officially linked to the type of work done;
- There is no provision in the Brazil-U.S. Ethanol agreement signed in 2007 that "ensures Brazil will be a major beneficiary" of ethanol exports to the United States. Not only is there no such clause or guarantee in that document, as stated in the Bloomberg report, but current import tariffs in the U.S. strongly discourage importing ethanol from Brazil;
- There is no such thing as a "razor-sharp stalk" as mentioned in the report -- what's razor-sharp is the straw that's burned so cutters can begin the harvest. In fact, burning the straw is called for in collective agreements between workers and employers. If the straw isn't cleared, the cutter cannot do the job.
"There is no reasonable explanation for phrases like 'cars run on human blood' or 'Brazil entering its industrial revolution' finding their way into a report produced by Bloomberg, leaving the impression that its professionals are not aware of what goes on in Brazil, including its current stage of industrialization. In fact, Bloomberg professionals cover Brazil every day, and routinely file stories that clash directly and quite blatantly with much of what's in the 'Deadly Brew' report," Jank concludes.
About UNICA:
The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA), represents the top producers of sugar and ethanol in the country's South-Central region, especially the state of Sao Paulo, which accounts for 60% of the country's total production. Along with its 101 member companies, UNICA develops position papers, statistics and specific research in support of Brazil's sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity sectors. Its membership accounts for about 50% of Brazil's sugarcane harvest. In 2007, Brazil produced 425 million metric tons of sugarcane, which yielded 29.8 million tons of sugar and 17.7 billion liters of ethanol.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joseph 1:10PM (1/27/2008)
I know absolutely nothing about the issues concerning ethanol production in Brasil, but I'd imagine that the reality of the issue is somewhere between what the movie implies and what this press release says.
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rmontgomery 11:19PM (1/26/2008)
"Bloomberg appears more interested in showing impressive footage of a fire burning in the night than explaining that this is how straw is cleared virtually wherever sugarcane is harvested "
I spent 4 months on Kosovo (the Balkans) and although they were not burning sugarcane fields, the practice of burning residual crops is practiced widely in Kosovo. So, if that is what Bloomberg is upset about, they are clueless. Burning is the norm, not out of the ordinary at all in many countries.
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Emil 8:18AM (1/28/2008)
Of course there are a lot of setbacks with the ethanol. Very few if any think, that it is a perfect solution. But Mr. Bloomberg & co. would have better to make a film about quality of life at oil refinery vicinity, about human rights in Saudi Arabia, about lung diseases among kids in large cities etc.
Today the only mass-marketed alternative fuels are the biofuels. Critisizing them means promoting fossil fuels.
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Mik_Cal 3:03AM (1/29/2008)
Uh..no Emil...criticizing biofuels is criticizing biofuels. Setting up biofuels as the only alternative to petroleum is a propagandistic move on your part to say the least. There are first of all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles for one. Then there is hydrogen, which I don't advocate. I'm not sure how stupid you think readers of this blog are.
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Emil 9:04AM (1/29/2008)
Dear Mic_Kal:
Save me God from considering anybody stupid.
But I do insist on the sentence, that today the only mass-marketed alternative fuels are the biofuels.
Of course there are NEVs, plug-in conversions. In my country if you ride more than 30K miles a year - LPG conversion may be a good deal. Some countries ( Argentina, Pakistan ) promote the natural gas.
But today there are really only 2 fuels available: Gasoline and Diesel. Brazil , US and Germany offer something different that is mass-available : biofuels.
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Nick Gavrilov 2:09PM (3/11/2008)
Why are the Brazilian farmers burning off vegetative "waste" in their cane fields? That's usable biomass. If the Brazilians incorporated cellulosic ethanol (ce) technology into their cane distillation process that would increase ethanol output from a given piece of land and make the process more efficient.
See
Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn.
By Chuck Squatriglia
24 Jan 2008
A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said.
Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.
Full story Here.
Reply