Today in Biofuels Opinion: “It is time that U.S. trade policy and Senator Grassley come to terms with their outstanding commercial conflicts with Brazil.”
Dr. Mark S. Langevin, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland-University College: “It is time that U.S. trade policy and Senator Grassley come to terms with their outstanding commercial conflicts with Brazil, including the punitive tariffs on Brazilian ethanol imports. The world needs more U.S-Brazil cooperation to frame the negotiations underway for a post-Kyoto Protocol treaty to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to establish a global economic development agenda that reduces poverty and inequality around the world. Our future peace and prosperity now depend on the Obama administration’s capacity to overcome powerful private interests, including those rooted to corn fed ethanol production. The President’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, demonstrates such a capacity and seizes the opportunity to deepen cooperation with Brazil on a number of issues of vital concern to the United States, Brazil, and much of the world.”
Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development: “When you take agricultural land and agricultural food crops, corn, for example, and you put it into biofuel, you reduce access to grain. It causes an artificial hike in prices. When you take agricultural land in poor countries and you put it to produce biofuel, they are out there begging for food and subsisting on food aid. But when a country like Brazil is taking land that is not agricultural land and is growing sugarcane, and the price of sugar is not affected and it is economically viable, then of course one must look at it in context. If Europe decides to increase its biofuel production by ten percent, and you know that to produce one liter of biofuel it takes ten times as much water as one litre of fossil fuel, then the question you must ask yourself is, is it economically viable?”
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Filed Under: International • Opinion
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Joelle Brink | Aug 3, 2009 | Reply
I’m sure Mr. Nwanze’s remarks are well intentioned, but they are outdated. A new sustainable “closed loop” ethanol model has enabled Colombia to become South America’s #2 ethanol producer in only three years. Colombia uses land in a single valley and a highly water-efficient production technology that also reprocesses vinasse, normally the the major ethanol pollutant, into fertilizer for the new crop.
Brazil will either have to adopt this new more sustainable and efficient model or become non-competitive.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development would do well to assist Brazil’s migration to the Colombian model as the USDA has already done. It is sustainable, land and water efficient, minimizes trasportation emissions and costs, and preserves soil fertility without the negative impacts of commercial fertilizers.