page_title: Ethanol fuel in Brazil
section_title: Issues
hierarchical_section_title: Ethanol fuel in Brazil / Environmental and social impacts / Environmental effects / Issues
caption_attribution_description: English: Pic shows sugar cane harvesting (loading and transport to processing plant) without burning the plantation at Sao Paulo State, Brazil
context_page_description: Brazil is the world's second largest producer of ethanol fuel. Brazil and the United States have led the industrial production of ethanol fuel for several years, together accounting for 85 percent of the world's production in 2017. Brazil produced 26.72 billion liters, representing 26.1 percent of the world's total ethanol used as fuel in 2017.
  Between 2006–2008, Brazil was considered to have the world's first "sustainable" biofuels economy and the biofuel industry leader, a policy model for other countries; and its sugarcane ethanol "the most successful alternative fuel to date." However, some authors consider that the successful Brazilian ethanol model is sustainable only in Brazil due to its advanced agri-industrial technology and its enormous amount of arable land available; while according to other authors it is a solution only for some countries in the tropical zone of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
  In recent years however, later-generation biofuels have sprung up which don't use food crops that are explicitly grown for fuel production.
caption: Sugar cane harvest loading operation for transport to the sugar/ethanol processing plant, without previous burning of the plantation, São Paulo state.
exif: {"Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-T5", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "2573333/10000", "Image YResolution": "2573333/10000", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:09:22 00:49:08", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "744", "Image XPTitle": "[83, 0, 117, 0, 103, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 32, 0, 99, 0, 97, 0, 110, 0, 101, 0, ... ]", "Image XPComment": "[99, 0, 111, 0, 112, 0, 121, 0, 114, 0, 105, 0, 103, 0, 104, 0, 116, 0, 115, 0, ... ]", "Image XPAuthor": "Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz", "Image XPSubject": "[72, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 118, 0, 101, 0, 115, 0, 116, 0, 105, 0, 110, 0, 103, 0, ... ]", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Image Contrast": "Normal", "Image Saturation": "Normal", "Image Sharpness": "Normal", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1184", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4335", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:07:13 09:16:02", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:07:13 09:16:02", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "19", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1544", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1029", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}