Amid growing criticism of the impacts of biofuels production, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has become an outspoken defender of the eco-friendliness of sugarcane ethanol, an increasingly lucrative source of export earnings for Brazil. Lula stood up for sugarcane-based ethanol at the G8 summit meeting in Japan this month, at a U.S.-sponsored Food Security Summit in Rome in June and at a European-Latin American Summit in Peru in May. At all these meetings, foreign government officials and environmentalists charged that increased production of ethanol—especially from corn, but also from sugarcane—has been contributing to a rise in world food prices. Some also warned that in Brazil, the world’s second biggest ethanol producer behind the United States and the... [Log in to read more]
