Brazilian Family Farming Agriculture in the Biodiesel Production: A Portrait of Regional Possibilities

Abstract

Brazil is a country deeply labeled by economic and social contradictions when the distinct regions are placed in comparison. The living conditions of peasant vary greatly according to region where he lives. After the promulgation of the constitution of 1988 policies aimed to remedy these regional imbalances, mainly re- lated to rural people have been settled. In this sense, one of the governmental initiatives to lower this problem was the encouraging incentive program to cultivate castor beans and other crops by family farmers to produce biodiesel to share 50% of the mixture with mineral diesel in the proportion defined by law. The blend was initially 2% starting in 2006 and 5% until 2012. The Brazilian consumption of diesel oil in the 2006 was approximately 40 billions of liters in the transportation, agriculture and others sectors, so that a market of 800 millions of liters of biodiesel was suddenly created at attractive prices with total exemption from federal taxes. This paper analyzes what actually such market means in economic terms to various regions of Brazil. Two regions – North and Midwest still display a high degree of poverty for small farmers. The national biodiesel program may represent an interesting economical alternative for them

Bioenergy from “surplus” land: environmental and socio-economic implications

“…These growing demands are likely to require conversion of additional land to agricultural use and/or improvements in the productivity on existing land. Conflicts emerging from the demand for land will require land-use decisions that involve trade-offs among and between those demands and objectives for nature, soil, water, civil protection and human livelihood in rural communities (Lobley and Winter 2009;EEA 2010;Kamimura et al 2011).…”

Biodiesel in Brazil Should Take Off with the Newly Introduced Domestic Biofuels Policy: RenovaBio

“…Plentiful in both regions, castor would be a nice contender if it were not for the fact that this oilseed presents a very high viscosity content of 14.1 mm 2 /s, which is way above the maximum determined by the Brazilian Petroleum Agency (ANP) of 6.0 mm 2 /s [16]. That technical constraint alone deems castor an unsuitable alternative feedstock for the production of biodiesel [10,[17][18][19][20].…”

“…Mechanism Program name and acronym (in Portuguese) Although the SCS program was conceived to bring about major social and economic changes in the North and Northeast regions, as initially intended by the government, except for some modest progress, many authors see it as a failure. The reasons vary from high logistic and harvesting costs to low economies of scale, low utilization of agricultural machinery, artificial irrigation and fertilizer, and lack of access to financing due to red tape [18]. Therefore, this program is currently under revision in order to correct the aforesaid problems, already realized by the government.…”