Brazilian sugar cane industry roars back against Bloomberg Television documentary on worker conditions

The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) issued a stinging response to “Deadly Brew,” a documentary on the Brazilian sugar cane industry and ethanol which debuted on Bloomberg Television last week. UNICA said that the producers did not substantiate their contention that worker conditions were deteriorating, did not report that sugar cane workers are paid more than twice the minimum wage, that cane cutters do not have minimum daily quotas, and used outdated injury and death reports without reporting falling accident rates.

The Bloomberg documentary, titled “Deadly Brew: The Human Toll of Ethanol,”  investigated  82,000 injuries and 300 deaths reported in the sugar cane industry in the past 3 years, and profiled a group of migrant workers who were jailed for more than a month after striking for better conditions.

Questions have circulated for months, even years, about the scalability of the Brazilian ethanol “miracle” owing to the low wages, long hours, health problems and squalid conditions associated with sugar cane field workers. Brazil, the world’s leading exporter of ethanol (900 million gallons per year, depends on sugar cane cutters who earn $430 per month at the top end, for cutting 10-12 tons of cane per day.

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