Brasil

Brazil is the world largest sugar cane producer. Approximately 5 million hectares are covered with sugar crops. Bruno Ribeiro, a lawyer from the Land Pastoral Commission and the Federation of Farm Workers of Pernambuco, an advocate of rural workers, sugar cane and fruit workers’ rights, tells us about the dark side of the white product.

-In 1975, when Brazil underwent a military dictatorship, the program Proalcohol started, and sugar cane plantations increased exponentially. Did this increase create better opportunities from a social point of view?

-No. In the 70’s, Pernambuco was the largest producer in the country and this was not reflected in the expansion period, neither was it historically manifest when the economy was in its highest peak, specially in the state of Pernambuco. Before the crisis in Pernambuco, -the state is the fourth or fifth producer- the sugar cane sector was ever responsible for a spread of misery and exclusion. In the 60’s, a number of specialists like Josué de Castro and Nelson Chaves, who become renowned worldwide, pointed out that the economy of the sugar cane generated a human sub-race which was a byproduct of hunger. The model of sugar cane production was always harmful, both socially and environmentally.

Ever since Proalcohol started, i.e. over the past 15 or 20 years, according to estimations, in Pernambuco and the Northeast, around 40 thousand jobs have been lost as a result of sugar cane expansion. What was the outcome of these events? Workers were forced into the slums (“favelization”). In 1998, a study revealed that 60 per cent of the population from 43 municipalities of the Atlantic forest area, a population of rural origins, was living in urban areas. Expelled from the countryside, they migrated to the outskirts of cities of the midlands or of large capitals, adding up to the ongoing violence, typical of large metropolis. And there, they added to the ranks of workers who provide cheap labor.

- Up to then, did workers live in sugar cane estates?

- Collective bargaining agreements used to protect the areas of subsistence farming of workers and their families. With the expansion of Proalcohol, and after sugar cane extended to areas under strict environmental protection, such sites were destroyed.

- Consequently, workers’ migration from one region to the other must be significant...

- For a long time, the union movement has claimed that labor should be hired locally.  Today, the Pernambuco companies are hiring workers from distant regions. The region of the sugar cane area of Pernambuco is divided into: North and South. Companies cut out the cane in the south area with workers from the north, who are lodged in very inadequate facilities. This results in the workers’ separation from their families and their extremely hard work on the fields, and it also hinders the organization of trade unions.

Proalcohol caused the migration of labor and job losses. To this, another element has to be added: the development of black lists. Those who turn to courts or labor authorities to claim their labor rights are placed in a record held by the companies. In there, the most sophisticated technologies serve an extremely medieval mentality. There are consulting companies who “map” those in union meetings to include them in the lists. If you worked in the south area and made a claim against the company and you happen to apply for a job in the north, you'll never get it. If you gave evidence in court, you will not get a job either. In 2002, in view of the district attorney's reports, the High Court of Labor stopped publishing the lists of claimants in their internet newsletters to deter such a practice, what is a blatant violation of human rights. In an area where there is no alternative to sugar cane farming or industrial production, black lists clearly attempt against people’s civil rights.

Fewer workers with more work

- Agricultural industrialization has caused a deep reduction of the labor used.  What has happened with the sugar cane sector?

- The introduction of new production techniques and the excess of available work force have caused and evident increase in this type of work, but reduced the number of workers. Fifteen years ago, the estimates were 240 thousand people employed in Pernambuco. According to the 2001/2002 harvest data, we confirmed a definitive loss of nearly 150 thousand jobs in the Pernambuco sugar cane region. There are fewer people employed, but who work a lot more, with the consequent health risks and hazards. The efficiency and low cost of Brazilian sugar production find an explanation in the lack of social benefits and the destruction of the environment. Fifteen years ago in the state of São Paulo, a worker cutting 4.5 tons daily made a day’s pay; at present no company would hire a worker doing less than 9 to 10 tons a day. It is a very unhealthy work for a human being. That is the reason why there are no sugar cane workers over 40 years old. Additionally, women are not part of the sugar cane labor force, they were excluded in those areas.

In summary, despite the differences among the three production centers in the country, they share the exclusion of women, environmental damage, the increase of productivity with a drastic reduction of jobs, the lack of employment security, the intensive use of agro-toxic substances, the destruction of forests, the burning of the cane. Moreover, there is a historically harmful relation with public money: the sugar sector has always pocketed public resources.

- Making use of its economic power, the industry applies strong pressure in the establishment nationwide.

- The property of large extensions of land (20 years ago in Pernambuco, 18 families were the owners of all the land in the floresta area); the extensive exploitation of sugar cane as one-resource economy; the total control of the industrial production and the absence of agro-industrial variation (whereas Brazil produces mainly sugar and alcohol, Cuba extracts over 100 products from the cane), generate a huge concentration of wealth and a well-known control over the spheres of power. If sugar cane prevails in rural areas, and in the cities the industry is exclusively linked to it, you can imagine how political power (at all levels: from the mayor to the city councilors, magistrates and delegates) is placed at their service. Even to build a cemetery, the mayor has to request a section of sugar cane field is disaffected. All of this results in an enormous pressure capacity of the sugar sector over the federal government.

The model and its miseries

- Going back to the social issues, can we say that the poorest sector of the population is linked to the sugar production?

- Beyond the shadow of a doubt! In a UNDP report published in March 2002, Brazil is 73^rd  among 173 countries scored for the Human Development Index (HDI), a shameful position if we bear in mind the size of the country and its situation in the world economy. Whereas the average HDI in Brazil is 0.757, in the sugar-alcohol areas of Pernambuco and Alagoas it is less than 0.500. In Alagoas we have 6 of the most impoverished boroughs, including the poorest one: São José de Tapera, with an HDI of 0.265. Maximum values of HDI in the region of Alagoas sugar cane plantation are around 0.358, only higher to the HDI of the 10 poorest countries in the world. In the case of the sugar cane middle region of Pernambuco, the maximum index is 0.438, just above the HDI of the poorest 20 countries in the world.

The last official survey placed illiteracy 16.67 per cent above national average and 23.60 above in rural areas. In Pernambuco, 27 per cent of the population is illiterate, and the rate rockets to 45 per cent in rural areas within the sugar cane region. In Alagoas, there is 36 per cent of illiterates, and 58 per cent in the rural areas of the floresta. The sugar cane regions and their population were historically treated as simple attachments of an economy sector whose tangible results were severe social damages. For four hundred years, public policies have been implemented which allegedly promote citizenship, education, health, employment but they promote only one thing: sugar.

- Is there slave work in the sugar cane?

- When workers have to leave their families to work in the most insecure conditions for four or five months, they are prevented from forming a union, they are demanded an inhumane, unpleasant task, we may say this is a half-slave work. What is clear is that human rights and personal freedom are not respected. In contrast, it is announced that there has been an important reduction of child labor, but such a reduction is not the result of more "big-hearted" company owners. It is the result of an illogical excess of adult labor availability, thereby a man or a woman may be hired with no contract of employment or insurance whatsoever.

- Probably plenty of workers would want to leave the sugar cane...

- These data may be surprising, but if any of my brothers or sisters who struggle for land reform would hear this, they might say I am being pretty conservative. There are some workers who would rather leave the sugar cane, but this is not in the agenda of rural workers and it is not in mine, either. In the northeast, sugar cane is considered satanic, but sugar cane is nothing but a plant. We do not struggle against a plant, but against the relations surrounding it. We confront large landowners and the industrial sector exploiting so many people. 

- Now that you mention large landowners, what is the extension of an average sugar plantation?

- Fifteen years ago in Pernambuco there were 43 sugar plantations. Nineteen of them closed down, and the lands were merged into other plantations. In the present time, companies own on average 30 thousand hectares of land. In Sao Paulo there is a similar situation. Huge green ‘deserts’, virtually uninhabited, since the population was pushed to the deprived outskirts of cities. To the large concentration of land in the hands of very few people, to the expansion of sugar cane to inadequate areas, a high industry concentration is added. The same business groups depart from one place to the other, expanding themselves.

When the wicked comes from outside

- Are there growth expectations in this sector?

- There are issues which have not been properly tackled yet by Lula's government. For example: a platform of Third World countries is the fair trade and the rejection of European and American subsidies. However, a discussion of this topic with a focus on international trade and on our model of internal production is necessary. Lula’s government is making efforts at international level to put an end to this protectionism. But if all efforts are directed to maintain this model we have endured, we are going to have sugar cane everywhere and nonsensically managed. If restrictions come to an end, the extremely low prices obtained by Brazil from its sugar cane will mean that all European imports can be handled in one season, which shall result in a larger expansion of the product. We do not support European and American subsidies, but we do not claim either that they should be eliminated to the benefit of Brazilian large landowners. This would bring about more environmental adverse impact, more social exclusion and would make land reform unviable.

This is the reason why the paradigm of clean fuel and renewable energy sources has to evaluated in all its scope. It is stubbornly announced that the fuel extracted from sugar cane gives off fewer contaminating gases. However, we have to see the problem well before the fuel gets into the exhaust of cars. What are the consequences of the indiscriminate use of agro-toxics, of the burning of sugar cane and the resulting greenhouse effect, of the soil vitrification, of the pollution of rivers and under-surface layers (for example Guaraní underground water source)? How can an industrial item be considered clean when its bond with human beings and land is so damaging, so unclean?

- Sugar cane, added to the advancement of transgenic soy for bio-diesel...

- They are not good perspectives. Up to the present time, alcohol has no international market, but can become a commodity. Japan shall add alcohol to its gasoline, and the United States could also import more alcohol (the US Environment Protection Agency banned fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether [MTBE] two years ago because it was carcinogenic) The IUF, the CONTAG, the federations and trade unions have requested the Brazilian government to include the issue in their agenda, but even the government has turned a blind eye to these claims.

- How can we face the reality you have described?

-Local work has to be revalued, at the same time the coordination of strategies with workers of the sector worldwide is an absolute requirement. It is also necessary to raise consumer awareness so they do not buy products manufactured in harmful conditions, to the environment and to human beings. Furthermore, we should help workers who were excluded from the sugar economy, who live in city outskirts and want to return to the countryside. We must break extensive landowning, intensify the process of land reform, design the basis for a different economy. This is why we support self-management experiences which are reproducing in our region. In a different form of production (for example a family farm, where the aim is diversification through cattle raising, fish culture and others), sugar cane and alcohol are practicable. As stated before, one feature of the Brazilian sugar model is one-resource agriculture since this is exclusive in the industry. We should then develop a different concept of industrial and agricultural production, as an instrument to improve income distribution and better quality of life.

Gerardo Iglesias

© Rel-UITA

27 April, 2004