Many of our readers aren't big fans of ethanol. But it made sense to a lot of people when the biofuel was actually cheaper than gasoline. Times have changed, and several fuel retailers in Missouri have stopped blending ethanol with gasoline because it's cheaper to use straight gasoline now and the blends are not mandatory. Down in the Southern hemisphers, though, we discover that Brazil's ethanol industry is booming. This year, Brazil is selling 605,000 m³ of ethanol (equivalent to 156 million gallons US) to Europe, certain Asian markets and, yes, the US. Brazil must be doing very well, because a multi-year partnership has just been signed between the IndyCar Series and APEX-Brasil a trade promotion agency that will be the official ethanol supplier to the series beginning in 2009. The deal includes cooperation from UNICA, the Brazilian union of Sugarcane industries.

[Source: Green Daily]

Photo by Marxchivist. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

It's been so long (like six months) since there was a nice dispute about the impacts of Brazil's ethanol industry. In the past we've seen questions raised about the workers' conditions and the environmental standards of the sugarcane operation. To tell its side of the story, Brazil began a concerted pro-ethanol diplomatic offensive earlier this year. The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) is on the defensive this week because of a report issued by the Friends of the Earth called "Fuelling Destruction in Latin America," which says that the mono-sugarcane-culture used by the Brazilian ethanol industry is detrimental to the workers and the environment. You can download the report here.

Faced with these accusations, UNICA sent out a release (pasted after the jump) that basically calls the Friends of the Earth a bunch of liars, and released a PDF of the "partial list of specific errors, unsubstantiated claims and conclusions in the Friends of the Earth report." Ahh, it's good to be back.

[Source: Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association - UNICA]

85 liters of ethanol per each tonne (metric) of sugarcane harvested. This is the output of a standard sugarcane ethanol plant. As we know, 45 percent of Brazilian fuel needs are covered by ethanol. Of course, what once was thought as the easy solution to replace fossil fuels is now being blamed for a dramatic rise in food prices (or not), by as much as 86 percent. However, we found an article that states that only one feedstock has maintained prices since 2006: sugarcane.

Then there are the surface constraints. UNICA (the Brazilian association of sugarcane producers) states that only 1 percent of Brazil's agricultural land is used to produce ethanol, yet it supplies 45 percent of the country's fuel needs. UNICA also says that there's about seven times more land available from rough surfaces that can't be used for anything else, not to mention that they can plant different species of sugarcane which produce throughout the year.

Therefore UNICA's answer is "yes," ethanol is still a good alternative

[Source: El Mundo via Madrid+d]

Fourth of July equals fireworks, parades and, if the Brazilian sugarcane growers - represented by UNICA, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association - get their way, a reduced or eliminated ethanol import tariff. UNICA is calling on the U.S. Congress to eliminate the 54-cent tariff on each imported gallon of ethanol. Doing so, they argue, would reduce the cost of using cars for U.S. drivers as UNICA's "Are We There Yet?" campaign will try to prove. After all, UNICA says, the ethanol tariff is a relic from 1980 and was never meant to be permanent anyway.

UNICA's website, which features the oh-so-subtle graphic seen above, doesn't highlight how badly American ethanol producers would be hurt by letting Brazilian ethanol flow more cheaply in U.S. pumps. Still, if cheaper gas is the result, then I'm sure not many drivers will really care where their fuel comes from (see also *cough* Wal-Mart *cough* China). Read more after the jump.

[Source: UNICA]

This past week, Bloomberg Television aired a documentary on the Brazilian ethanol industry called "Deadly Brew: The Human Toll of Ethanol." With a name like that, you can probably guess that the filmmakers have a certain viewpoint on the way ethanol is made from sugarcane in Brazil. Well, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) is not happy with the film, and has put out a statement (available after the break) that calls the movie "Dangerously Misleading and Out-of-Context."

UNICA has 101 member companies, and the group's president and CEO, Marcos Jank, calls "Deadly Brew" seriously out-of-date. Jank said that, "Bloomberg appears more interested in showing impressive footage of a fire burning in the night than explaining that this is how straw is cleared virtually wherever sugarcane is harvested in the world." The statement also includes a list of what UNICA calls "misrepresentations" in the film. You can read all these claims after the jump.

I haven't seen the film and I haven't been to Brazil to see the conditions for myself, but my guess is that we'll get a response from the Deadly Brew team in the near future.

Related:

• Bloomberg to air documentary about Brazilian ethanol worker labor conditions
• São Paulo searching for cleaner ethanol through mechanization

[Source: UNICA - Brazil's Sugarcane Industry Association]