Brazil Meets Demand through Sugarcane-Ethanol Production

That was before world petroleum prices skyrocketed and millions of Brazilians turned to cheaper sugar cane-based ethanol to fuel their vehicles. Now, fuels made from sugar cane have become Brazil's most-used energy source behind fossil fuels.

That boom has transformed Moema into one of Brazil's biggest sugar-cane mills and turned much of Sao Paulo state, where Moema is located, into the world capital of sugar cane ethanol.

Exploding demand has pushed mills here to plant on more farmland, harvest the crop more quickly and grow better-quality cane. Such innovations have drawn a steady stream of international visitors eager to learn the country's biofuel secrets and attracted global investors hoping to take part in the ethanol rush.

The country now ranks a close second in ethanol production to the United States, where farmers make the biofuel from corn, a far more expensive, less efficient and less environmentally friendly method. Brazil is by far the world's biggest producer of sugar cane.

"Brazil's industry has really been cost effective because they've had time to develop their methods," said Amani Elobeid, a leading biofuels expert at Iowa State University. "They've built an industry that is good at what it does."

Brazilian officials said part of their secret is non-stop research into sugar cane and ethanol, which started more than three decades ago when Brazil's government first subsidized ethanol production to counter rising world petroleum prices.

The resulting know-how has been put to use at Moema, where planters work with some 60 strains of sugar cane designed for every imaginable variety of weather conditions and terrains. That's allowed the mill to plant cane in previously unsuitable soils and extract more sucrose, the key ingredient in both sugar and ethanol.

Producers plant different strains of sugar cane for ethanol and other strains for sugar production and can use up to six generations of the same plant before the sucrose level deteriorates.

While U.S. sugar producers say their growth has been limited by concerns about pollution caused by the refining process, Brazilian growers insist they've solved what's been a longtime sugar-industry headache: What to do with vinasse, a potentially toxic, molasses-like sugar byproduct that can pollute groundwater and nearby rivers.

The Brazilians mix vinasse and water in carefully calculated proportions, which when spread over the right kind of soil, act as fertilizer.

View the Kentucky.com story by clicking here.

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