The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Cuban President Fiedel Castro gives his opinion on bio-fuels:

(caribbeannetnews.com) The mass cultivation of sugar cane needed to produce much of the world’s ethanol pushes small farmers to abandon lands to large companies that force workers to toil without adequate water, food, housing, sometimes for $3 a day, Castro wrote in an editorial published on Tuesday by Cuba’s Granma newspaper.

“For us, the main question is to eliminate the plantation and have a serious food production policy,” Castro wrote, citing dozens of Brazilian cane workers who described their difficulties in a documentary by Brazilian filmmaker Maria Luisa Mendonza.

[...]

Castro emerged from eight months of convalescence in March to dispute an ethanol cooperation accord signed by the US and Brazil, the world’s largest ethanol exporter. He and Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have argued that a global shift toward bio-fuel would drive up world food prices and devastate the poor. Venezuela is the world’s sixth largest exporter of crude.

[...]

The mass production of sugar cane — the main ingredient of Brazilian ethanol, whereas the US favors corn-based bio-fuel — pollutes soil and drinking water with chemical fertilizers, while the routine burning of cane fields before harvest contaminates and dries out the air, he said. (more…)

I may not like the man, but on this issue he is on point.