Ensayo Revelations Ufo

Biofuel Production - Local Development or Social Breakdown?
By Mario Osava

FORTALEZA, Brazil, Aug 18, 2011 (IPS) - Biofuels are an alternative energy source that can drive local development by generating jobs, know-how and technology. But they can also cause social damage, as locals fear in the case of industrial-scale exploitation of babassu palm trees, which grow abundantly in the wild incentral and northern Brazil.

Some 400,000 women and their families living on the eastern edge of the Amazon jungle depend on the babassu palm for a livelihood. The women are known as "quebradeiras" (breakers) because they collect and break the coconuts.

These subsistence-level households sell the coconut kernels, from which the oil is extracted and used as vegetable oil and in the soap andcosmetic industries, for cash. They also use the starch-rich fruit to produce a kind of flour, and the rest of the coconut is used for animal feed and charcoal.

The traditional quebradeira communities also use the leaves of the tall babassu palm tree for roof thatch, woven house walls, and basket-making, while the trunks can be used as building materials.

The Interstate Movement of BabassuCoconut Quebradeiras (MIQCB) has warned of the threats to the members' livelihood from the pig iron and ceramics industries, which use the coconut shells and husks to make charcoal on a larger-scale, and pose unfair competition by hiring poorly-paid coconut breakers

These industries burn the entire coconut, she said, wasting the kernels - of which there are three to five in each coconut - andthe nutritional potential of the fruit, while causing air pollution

The government of the central state of Tocantins has banned the use of babassu coconuts in industrial furnaces, but the other three states where MIQCB members are active have not done so, she complained.

The burning of the kernels produces acrolein, a toxic fume. For that reason, the use of vegetable oil as motor fuel beforeit is turned into biodiesel is prohibited, said Marcelo Rodrigues, a chemical engineer at Tecbio, a biofuel technology company.

Tecbio itself is posing a threat to the babassu subsistence economy. The firm, based in Fortaleza, the capital of the northeast state of Ceará, near the areas where the babassu palm tree grows wild, has developed and is trying to sell a system of industrialprocessing that would replace the quebradeiras.

The coconut breakers do their work manually, breaking the hard- shelled coconut with an upturned axe blade and a wooden stick used as a kind of hammer. Several small machines have been invented to make the work less dangerous, but none of them have been approved by the quebradeiras themselves.

Tecbio, founded by Brazilian biodiesel inventor ExpeditoParente, has designed a plant to produce ethanol from the babassu coconut. According to the company's literature, it will produce 80 litres of ethanol per ton of babassu coconut.

The company has also developed a machine to produce compact briquettes from the coconut shell, whose density increases the heating capacity, Rodrigues said, adding that "a large company" has expressed an interest inthe charcoal substitute.

The babassu coconut kernels can also be used to produce biodiesel and bio-kerosene as aviation fuel that has the advantage of functioning well at low oxygen levels, he explained while attending the All About Energy 2011 fair on renewable energy sources held in July in Fortaleza.

The quebradeiras have been recognised as one of the "traditional populations" that enjoyprotection under Brazil's environmental laws. These groups also include the "seringueiros" - Amazon jungle rubber- tappers - and small-scale fishing communities.

The Brazilian government guarantees the coconut breakers a minimum price for their kernels.

The quebradeiras have been organised in the MIQCB, which includes associations, cooperatives and working groups, for 16 years. Most of...