Giving Compass' Take:
- Nadia Sussman discusses how Florida communities of color are polluted by companies burning sugar cane while Brazil shows that there is an alternative to this harmful practice.
- How can the US begin to follow Brazil's lead? What role can you play in driving the needed shifts?
- Learn more about environmental racism in the South.
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This year, reporters at The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica investigated the impact of sugar cane burning in Florida. The harvesting practice helps produce more than half of America’s cane sugar, but it sends smoke and ash into largely low-income communities of color in the state’s heartland.
In our reporting, we learned that other countries have found ways to harvest their crops without those burns. So we recently traveled to Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugar cane, to learn how and why they switched to another method.
Brazil has a massive sugar cane industry that produces raw sugar, ethanol and electricity. The country farms more than 20 million acres, compared to less than 1 million in the U.S.
Beginning in the 1990s, residents of São Paulo, the nation’s largest sugar-cane-producing state, voiced concerns similar to those of Glades residents today: They complained of ash and soot blanketing their homes, and of respiratory problems.
In response to public pressure, officials in São Paulo passed a law in 2002 mandating the gradual elimination of pre-harvest burns over the next three decades. Producers invested in harvesting equipment that allowed them to cut the cane without burning. In the following years, the sugar cane industry worked with the state government to eliminate nearly all burns by 2017 and enact other environmental-protection measures. (Burning is still permitted until 2031 in areas too steep to harvest by machine.)
The results have been dramatic. The dry sugar cane leaves that once went up in smoke now form a protective blanket on the fields, enriching the soil. Some of these leaves, commonly called straw in Brazil, are also collected to generate renewable energy. Excess electricity from the mills is sold to the grid, often at a significant profit.
“I have no doubts that today, no one wants to return to the past and no one wants to burn [sugar cane],” said Antonio de Padua Rodrigues, the technical director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association.
Read the full article about burning sugar cane by Nadia Sussman at The Counter.