Behind Brazil’s ethanol boom, brutal working conditions

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‘Even as Brazil’s booming economy is powered by fuel processed from [sugar] cane, labor officials are confronting what some call the country’s dirty little ethanol secret: the mostly primitive conditions endured by the multitudes of workers who cut the cane,’ writes the Times’ Patrick J. McDonnell from Bocaina, Brazil.

Biofuels may help reduce humanity’s carbon footprint, but the social footprint is substantial.

‘These workers should have a break, a place to eat and access to a proper restroom,’ Marcus Vinicius Goncalves, a government labor cop in suit and tie, declared in the midst of a snarl of felled stalks and bedraggled cane cutters here. ‘This is degrading treatment.’

‘More than 300,000 farmworkers are seasonal cane cutters in Brazil, the government says. By most accounts, their work and living conditions range from basic to deplorable to outright servitude.’

-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City