Another essential point to be noted, less environmental and more social, is the question of the land ownership. We presented the land in itself and how it reacts to all the changes occurring. We are now going to present the people owning this land… In the “Sugar Cane Agro-Ecological Zoning”, launched by the Brazilian government in October 2009, the zones in which the government will support an increase in biofuels production is defined. It is clearly remarkable that sugarcane plantations and mills are and will rapidly expand throughout the country.
There has been an important effect of land monopolizing in many Southern countries, like in Africa, in South America and, especially, in Brazil. In Brazil, the expansion of the farming of sugarcane generated many social consequences. For instance, the government or private companies are buying lands originally owned by farmers’ families, consequently generating the expulsion of these traditional families and local peasants. Mathieu Combes, a journalist at NaturaScience, whom we interviewed, explains that there is a strong criticism against land monopolizing.
The Brazilian Secretary of Agriculture and Environment of the town of Luz, Dario Paulineli, describes impacts in the region saying that “sugar cane plantations expanded quickly in the last few years. The company Louis Dreyfus has made many lease-contracts with local farmers, and the environmental impact has been enormous. The mills spread poison from airplanes, and it reaches neighbouring farms, as well as urban areas.”
Throughout the country, there are less small plots of land farmed by local people but much more huge plantations owned by big landowners (national but also foreigners). This movement generates environmental issues, since lands are devoted to mono- cropping but, also, it generates important social impacts. Many local farmers have to leave the land they farm, and consequently lose their means of living. Some of the local Brazilian workers, instead of leaving their land, are employed in these huge industrial plantations. But the working conditions are extremely hard: constrained work for more than ten hours a day and only paid two euros. They are paid according to the amount of cane they cut, not at the hour which stimulate competition between the workers and often leads to exploitation. They live in unsanitary houses, without access to drinkable water nor medical care. The cases of health disease are also numerous, especially with the spread of fertilizers and pesticides, really dangerous.
The journalist Maria Luisa MENDONCA interviewed Brazilian farmers to know how they felt about the huge changes in their work and in their living conditions. She collected the story of Gaudino Correira, a Brazilian farmer who says that “contracts are for 12 years, and after that the sugar cane has destroyed everything. The mill uses heavy machines to prepare the land, which causes soil erosion. They burn sugar cane, and the ashes spread throughout the region. I did not want to lease out my land, and now I’m surrounded by sugar cane. Here there is no more land for farming, and therefore food prices have risen a lot. My neighbours have stopped producing corn, beans, coffee, and milk, and leased out their lands. I still plant corn, beans, and produce milk, but for small producers the price did not increase, only for the middleman and consumers.”
Those farmers’ testimonies show how important are the social and human impacts, beside the environmental ones. The massive production of sugarcane in Brazil implies many changes in the country.