Documentary on Brazilian sugarcane industry to air on Bloomberg; looks at 82,000 injuries, 300 deaths, jailing of strikers

A documentary on the Brazilian sugar cane ethanol industry has been completed and will air on Bloomberg Television on January 24th. The documentary, titled “Deadly Brew: The Human Toll of Ethanol,” will investigate the 82,000 injuries and 300 deaths reported in the sugar cane industry in the past 3 years, and profile a group of migrant workers who were jailed for more than a month after striking for better conditions.

Questions have circulated for months, even years, about the scalability of the Brazilian ethanol “miracle” owing to the low wages, long hours, health problems and squalid conditions associated with sugar cane field workers. Brazil, the world’s leading exporter of ethanol (900 million gallons per year, depends on sugar cane cutters who earn $430 per month at the top end, for cutting 10-12 tons of cane per day.

However, the Brazilian sugar ethanol industry has continued to expand. Recently, agricultural officials and biofuel industry representatives explained the proposed expansion of the ethanol industry to portions of the Amazon, saying that already cleared fields would be used for sugarcane production.

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