They stand for the providers of sugarcane to bio-ethanol producing companies. Their point of interest is also mainly economic, but more tempered than companies as they are not situated in the same parameters of competitiveness. Farmers’ economic interests are at a micro-scale as they regard the viability of their production of sugarcane. What also matters to farmers and creates tensions with companies they provide in sugarcane is the access to land property. Companies tend to buy farmers’ lands so as to better control the production of sugarcane and, more precisely, to hinder farmer’s independence of choice of which company they will choose to provide indeed.
Some farmers also blame companies regarding their bad working and living conditions. This is what Camilla Teixeira, who works at Bio-EN, a Brazilian NGO that fights for the improvement of farmers’ living and working conditions, calls the “New Brazilian slavery”.