Food Crops plus Fuel Crops for Brazil

Stephanie Adams

9/19/2008 3:06pm

There have been some concerns when it comes to the global food crisis and the drive to create ethanol bio-fuel crops. Is the push to finding a bountiful oil alternative causing the rise in food prices? According to Brazil, that’s not the case, they have more uncultivated land that can be dedicated to bio-fuel or food. They think that bio-fuel is not related to the food crisis and production of bio-fuels can only help bring countries out of energy dependence. Their bio-fuel crop of choice is sugar cane ethanol which needs less land, is more eco-friendly and costs less than the U.S. corn alternative.

Brazil’s agriculture is booming and comes second to the U.S. when it comes to creating bio-fuel. Since the 70’s Brazil has been focused on using and creating bio-fuel and almost 100% of the vehicles in Brazil run on either ethanol or a combination of ethanol and gas. Brazil is pushing the use of bio-fuels in larger vehicles such as buses and trucks.

For Brazil the best outlook is continuing the production bio-fuel crops and food crops at the same time. Brazil has more uncultivated land than the amount of land devoted to agriculture in the European Union and sees no need to worry about the two affecting each other. They see the U.S. tariffs on imported bio-fuel as a reason for the price of corn being so high; if the tariffs were dropped the U.S. would possibly have a cheaper price on ethanol.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/06/03/the-view-from-brazil-biofuels-are-not-a-problem.html