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Headlines : InternationalBrazil: Energy sovereignty vs. food sovereignty
The cases described further on illustrate the way in which, once again, the large-scale monoculture model, this time for the production of biofuels, usurps the indigenous peoples and local communities’ territorial rights, violates their human rights, compromises food sovereignty, and causes deforestation and destruction.
[Posted By Agustina]Republished from World Rainforest Movement
In Brazil, production through agriculture of a new energy model is present every day in the mass media and increasingly the development of this field is gaining social endorsement and economic justification. Rapidly, the use of land to produce food is sharing its space with the fuel production. This change in social perception is very evident in the repeated news features showing farmers and landowners as the new “oil field” owners.
Within the world panorama substituting oil by a “renewable” energy, Brazil appears as a world leader in agro-energy because of its tropical climate, its vast arable lands, availability of water resources and regional facilities. Furthermore, the advantageous position of Brazil in this world leadership is further strengthened by the creation in 2005 of a national agro-energy programme and an ambitious private investment fund for the sector, planned and presided by the Minister of Agriculture of President Lula’s first government, Roberto Rodrigues.
Posted by Agustina
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- Lula to help destroy deep Amazon
Posted by johnnycivil on Tuesday, January 23rd 2007
Targeting biofuels is all very well, but who is the number one sponsor of rainforest destruction? Cargill in the Amazon is planting massive acreage of soybeans for export to Europe, mainly because Europeans won’t touch US-sourced genetically modified soybeans. Here you have a US corporation destroying Amazonian rainforest to produce an export crop for Europe.
Compare this to sugarcane ethanol production – here, you have a long-standing agricultural system in which sugarcane is grown, pressed for sugary sap, and the sap is fermented to cane beer, and the woody part of the sugarcane is burned to drive the distillation process. The ash and yeast sediment is spread back on the fields (a good nitrogen and phosphorous source) and the entire process is sustainable and needs no fossil fuel input – and produces no net CO2, as all CO2 released was originally taken up by the growing sugarcane.
The main threat of ethanol production is to fossil fuel concerns, who simply don’t want to see ethanol taking away any part of their lucrative fossil fuel transport market; nor do fossil fuel concerns want to see global warming regulations capping CO2 emissions, nor do they want to see fuel efficiency standards in the US raised from 10 mpg to 60 mpg – and so they are running massive public relations efforts targeting global warming and renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Take corn ethanol production – only 15% of US corn goes to ethanol production, and 55% goes to factory farming hogs and chickens – but fossil fuel corps would have you believe that ethanol production is driving up food prices.