Brazil of Biofuels

Impacts of Crops on Land, Environment and Society

Volume 1 – Soy and castor bean

Biofuel Watch Center - NGO Repórter Brasil
Support: Solidaridad, Doen Foundation, Cordaid

Executive Summary

By publishing the first volume of the report “Brazil of the biofuels” – Impacts of crops on land, environment and society, the Biofuel Watch Center of the NGO Repórter Brasil starts a systematic support of the impacts caused by crops used in the production of agroenergy. The work, divided in three annual reports, is assessing the socioeconomic, environmental, agricultural effects and those on indigenous and traditional communities of soy and castor bean cultures  (volume 1), corn, cotton dendê and babaçu (volume 2), and sugar cane and pinhão manso (jatropha curcas) (volume 3).

Soy – The increasing international demand for biofuels becomes the most recent incentive factor for the advancement of soy production in Brazil. It is estimated that the country will even beat the USA in 2008 as the biggest exporter and, in six years at the most, it will consolidate the largest grain cultivated area in the world. If on the one hand that expansion generates wealth for some producers and foreign currencies for the country, on the other hand, it has intensified the impacts such as deforestation, pollution of rivers, and concentration of land and worker exploitation, mainly in the Cerrado and Amazon region.

Up to now, the main drive of soy expansion is indirect. The increase in the demand for corn-produced ethanol in the USA promoted the plantation of this grain and contributed to stop the soybean area around there. This is added to a scenario of intense worldwide demand for whole wheat for feed, making the international grain prices, which were dropping, start rising again. Facing that scenario, the Brazilian producer decided to plant more. Between the last harvests and that of 2007/08, soy plantation increased by a 20% in the North region (where the biggest part of the Amazon grove is situated) and by a 7,9 % in the Northeast region, mainly in the Cerrado areas of Maranhão, of Piaui and Bahía. In Brazil, soybean is the main raw material used to produce biofuel. Current consumption to supply for the compulsory mix of a 2% in oil fuel and to produce 850 million of litres of biofuel per year is estimated in 3,5 millions of tons of soy, an amount which being small, still does not influence soy prices in Brazil.

The future scenario intended for the soy cultivators is a hot market. The intense demand must sustain the process of grasslands substitution from the plantation of grain, which stabilizes deforested areas, many times illegally, and pushes stockbreeding more and more towards the Amazon, thus promoting deforestation of river basins which are fundamental for the Brazilian socio-biodiversity threatened by the indiscriminate plantation of soy in lands which, by law, should have their vegetation preserved, such as marginal plants. They also face the problems brought in by the pollution of their rivers, whose waterheads are located in agricultural areas, such as what happens in the Xingu Indigenous Park.

There are even cases where soy is being produced on lands officially acknowledged as traditionally indigenous by the Brazilian State. For example, there are plantations in the Xavante’s Maraiwatsede Indigenous Land, in Mato Grosso and in various areas acknowledged as traditionally occupied by the Guarani-Kaiowá, in South Mato Grosso.

In spite of the strong mechanization of the sector, slave work has been found in soy farms during the soil cleaning stage for the implantation of plantations. Data coming from the “laundry list” of slave labour, a public record of employers who used this type of labour, kept by the Ministry of Labour and Employment in 2007, show that 5,2 % of the cases took place in the grain sector. Companies and financial institutions have used devices to fight slave work, encouraged by the Brazilian Agreement for Eradication of Slave Labour. But there are still failures and the soy harvested by producers in the “laundry list” is still going into the market.

In spite of that, labour impacts focus on the low employment generation by means of the mechanization of production (1 to 4 direct jobs every 200 hectares) and on work-related accidents associated with the handling of machines and the use of agro-toxics, highly used in conventional and transgenic production. There is an increasing number of workers and communities surrounding the plantations who feel the effects of defensive farmers. For example, in 2005, 6870 people were searching for health services due to contamination. The soy process, based on a model of large mechanized properties, encourages the concentration of land and the rural exodus. In what respects to the increase in the production of soy, the number of rural properties devoted to grains dropped by a 42% in a decade. The rate was a 16,3% for the other properties. The expansion process has not been a peaceful one: it may be behind at least 4 out of the 16 agricultural conflicts in the State of Mato Grosso in 2007, at least 18 out of the 38 conflicts recorded in Paraná, and at least 2 out of the 105 conflicts which aroused in Para.

If on the one hand, it is early to dimension the weight agro-fuels represent in the agricultural price of commodities, on the other; it is already possible to conclude that the increase in the demand given by them tends to press foods in a scenario where the quotation of products such as soy, corn and wheat reached record steps. The International Monetary Fund estimates the raising of food prices by a 30,4% between November 2004, beginning of rising and December 2007. The choice for the agro-fuels will not initiate hunger in the world, since it affects hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. But it will certainly make the picture worse.

A study such as “Brazil of the biofuels”, in this delicate moment of the international commercial relationships, is highly strategic in order to identify bad behaviours and it can be used by the interested sectors in the reversion of this negative impacts scenario. Among the recommendations to the public power, there are the cutting of financing and renegotiation of debts with the businessmen responsible for those impacts, and also the prohibition of agricultural expansion in the Cerrado and the Amazon region without research which proves the socio-environmental viability, without properly consulting the local populations and that food sovereignty is guaranteed. For the business sector, a deep care is proposed in their supply chain and the own behaviour of the companies.

Castor bean – With the launching of the National Program of Production and Use of Biofuel (PNPB), in 2004, the spotlights turned to the castor bean again, chosen by the federal government as one of the ‘old reliable’ of their policy of social inclusion of family agriculture in the agro-energy productive chain. By government decision, the purchase of castor bean grown by family agriculture, mainly in the Semiarid Northeast area of Brazil, turned out to be tax incentive worth for the biofuel industry.

The project, on the other hand, has not brought concrete results yet for the small farmers, especially in the States located in the Northeast of Brazil. In spite of the efforts to popularize the castor bean cultivation, its productive chain is still too tied to private projects of the biofuel industry and far away from the needs of family agriculture, which generated misunderstandings between the agricultural and processing sectors. But there are exceptions to this rule. When organized farmers take on a productive chain and impose their own management and trading criteria, castor bean has proved to be, indeed, an alternative with a profitability which is social, environmental and economically sustainable.