Fueling Slavery

Though practiced throughout history, slavery in the modern era was intricately linked to our love of sugar. The wholesale enslavement and exportation of Africans to grow sugar in the Caribbean fed the newly found European sweet tooth. In 1700, the inhabitants of the British Empire, for example, consumed an average of four pounds of sugar a year, and many Africans paid with their freedom and their lives to feed this Western craving for sweets. (source)

Fast forward to the post-modern age. Today, the average American consumes one hundred pounds of sugar each year, so there is pressure on markets to produce sugar cheaply and in large quantities. However, hunger for energy alternatives such as ethanol is fueling an increase in slavery in Brazil.

Anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000 Brazilians are what are known as “debt
slaves.” Their employers keep them in perpetual bondage by charging them “exorbitant rates for the food, water, clothes and the tools they work with.”
Because their wages are so low, the workers can never pay off the “debt” and, thus, can never leave.

They work “from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week.” They are housed in “straw shacks.” They are given one meal a day, which they are often forced to eat standing up. They receive no medical attention and have no “access to toilets or good hygiene.” Many of them die from malaria.

If they decide they have had enough of the exploitation, the slave masters, known as gatos, threaten them with death. They are not bluffing. The gatos employ militias to intimidate and even kill human-rights workers—imagine what they would do to runaway slaves.

As in the rest of the world, Brazilian slavery is made possible because people live in such poverty. Like the victims of sexual trafficking, desperate people are lured by false promises only to be trapped.
-breakpoint (click the link for addition news stories)

If ethanol is leading to such oppression, I'd rather stick with oil for now. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt America's waistline any to cut back on sugar consumption either.

Forget the Corn

In "Pass on the Corn"*, Joel Belz argues against ethanol as a petroleum alternative. Ethanol can be made from soybeans, cane, and from some grasses, but it comes primarily from corn because it's so plentiful. At first, ethanol appeared an exciting option--grow our own fuel and kiss the Middle East's oil good-bye. However, as Belz points out, there are major flaws in the argument for ethanol.

First, it takes a lot of oil to produce ethanol for vehicles. In fact, it takes "about a gallon of petroleum-based fuel to manufacture 1.3 gallons of ethanol." Put another way, twenty gallons of ethanol at the gas station took fifteen gallons of petrol to produce.

Has anyone else noticed a decrease in fuel efficiency lately? That's because ethanol is not as fuel efficient, needing "eleven gallons of ethanol to go the same distance that ten gallons of petroleum will take you."

The worst problem, however, is that ethanol is subsidized. "Except for federal subsidies, every gallon of ethanol that's been sold in the United States would have cost about fifty cents more than it actually sold for."

That kind of subsidy will do us no good in the long run. While corn farmers are enjoying this bonanza, unintended consequences are sure to follow. "Ethanol gobbles up so much corn every day that the price of corn has jumped to record highs. Farmers who grow corn like that, but people who raise livestock don't because they have to pay more for the corn they feed their cattle and pigs." Not only will the many foods which are corn-based cost more, but so will beef, dairy, and pork products.

A little closer to home, a friend of mine raises cattle for beef. He's friends with the dairy farmers in his region--make that dairy farmer, since there are no longer any others there. That remaining dairy farm may not make it either. The owner can't afford to pay for corn feed, among other problems.

As a nation blessed with terrific geography, we should be well able to feed ourselves with no problem. The effects of federal subsidies on corn, however, will ripple through the economy, costing the average person more for food. It may drive more dairy farmers from the market as they sell off their cattle as beef and put their land up for sale. The loss of these farms cannot be attributed to the free market system in action since these particular financial woes are government induced.

Yes, we need alternative energy. No one wants to be free from our energy dependence on the Middle East more than I. Ethanol, however, is not the way to achieve this goal.

*quotes are from Belz's article in World