Well, I have to admit this call sucked ass. Even though 2003 to 2006 was THE time to be long Brazil, the last 18 months have been great also, up about 130% in the Brazil ETF. I underestimated the impact of the commodity boom and the currency appreciation, and to be honest just sold because it had gone up so much (never a good reason to exit). Just goes to show, powerful trends with the fundamentals in their favour can go way further than you'd ever expect. Kudos to the original poster, I hope he held on for the rest of the ride.
Well, I certainly hope Brazil continues to develop and grow after the commodity bubble bursts (whenever that may be?). They are going to have a hell of a time of it however, as their growth is still heavily dependent on raw materials. I spent 6 months there, and LOVED the people. But the extreme poverty I saw every where I went was shocking. Worst I've seen anywhere in the World, with the possible exception of Mexico City. Even the small towns were bad. Mostly dirt roads other than the main strip, brick shacks with no running water, etc. This is a major hurdle the country needs to overcome. The rain forest will also benefit if the average Brazilian is better off. Most of the on going destruction is due to slash and burn farming, illegal log poaching, and illegal mining by people that don't have many alternatives. Its not just the beauty and species that are the issue. This is the lungs of the Earth people. Destroy too much of the rain forest, and I bet you see global population decline from 6 billion rather quickly.
so, like, uh, did you ever post any pictures of why you love Brazil, so much? would like to see pictures
limitdown, you mean like abusa in the .com.br domain and garotanacional in the same domain etc.? I remember seeing that some travel agencies have "relaxation vacations" for US marines after they have been on high-stress tours - going to Rio de Janeiro, since it's difficult to get to "relax" in Iraq etc without wiping out the whole family afterwards ... The girls surely work in a high-risk sector with all the medication and traumas going on in those heads. Even tourism s booming in Brazil - they really have the world's largest natural resources ... and they like it that way - all natural. They do a lot of plastic surgeries in RJ and SP, though ... :eek:
. June 16, 2008 SouthAmerica: Reply to Banjo First of all, it is silly to call Brazil "the Saudi Arabia of biofuels," since Brazilian biofuels will never match the importance of Saudi Arabiaâs oil in world markets. The slavery analogy is not a good one. If there were slavery in Brazil these people still would be sold from an ethanol producer to another or to any other type of farming set up including soybean, coffee and so on⦠The solution to fix the problem brought up by the enclosed article is to implement a complete system of mechanized harvesting in Brazil as it happened in the past, and do the same thing as they did in the past when the Brazilian government gave a piece of land in the Amazon area to the displaced farmer workers - to see if the newly displaced farm workers can also help speed up the quicker destruction of the Amazon area. In the 1960âs when they last changed the farming system in Brazil when they started the harvesting mechanization they decided to offer the displaced farmer workers a piece of land in the Amazon area. The government was expecting that about 500,000 of these displaced farm workers would show up to claim their piece of land, but to the governmentâs surprise 5 million people did show up to claim their little patch of land and most of these people have been destroying the Amazon ever since. And today that original 5 million people has multiplied to at least 20 million people. That is what quick and easy solutions for todayâs problems it will get you in the future. ****** âHuman cost of Brazil's biofuels boomâ The country is a key producer of ethanol. Many of those cutting the sugar cane used to make the fuel are said to endure primitive conditions. By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Los Angeles Times - June 16, 2008 BOCAINA, BRAZIL -- For as far as the eye can see, stalks of sugar cane march across the hillsides here like giant praying mantises. This is ground zero for ethanol production in Brazil -- "the Saudi Arabia of biofuels," as some have already labeled this vast South American country. But even as Brazil's booming economy is powered by fuel processed from the cane, labor officials are confronting what some call the country's dirty little ethanol secret: the mostly primitive conditions endured by the multitudes of workers who cut the cane. Biofuels may help reduce humanity's carbon footprint, but the social footprint is substantial. "These workers should have a break, a place to eat and access to a proper restroom," Marcus Vinicius Goncalves, a government labor cop in suit and tie, declared in the midst of a snarl of felled stalks and bedraggled cane cutters here. "This is degrading treatment." More than 300,000 farmworkers are seasonal cane cutters in Brazil, the government says. By most accounts, their work and living conditions range from basic to deplorable to outright servitude. "Brazil has a great climate, great land and technology, but a lot of the competitive edge for biofuels is due to worker exploitation -- from slave work to underpayment," said Leonardo Sakamoto, a political scientist who runs a nonprofit labor watchdog group in Sao Paulo. In the last four years, said a lawyer from the Public Ministry, which acts as the Sao Paulo state district attorney, at least 18 cane cutters have died of dehydration, heart attacks or other ailments linked to exhaustion in this region, where the forests long ago gave way to agriculture. That does not include an unknown number of others who died in accidents, said the lawyer, Luis Henrique Rafael, part of a two-attorney team from the Public Ministry's office that recently toured the area to investigate abuses of the labor code. "They died from excess work," Rafael said. "Even prisoners have a better life. These men's only form of leisure is cachaca," he added, referring to the liquor distilled from sugar cane. In its annual report, Amnesty International last month highlighted the plight of Brazil's biofuel workers, more than 1,000 of whom were rescued in June 2007 after allegedly being held in slave-like conditions at a plantation owned by a major ethanol producer, Pagrisa, in the Amazonian state of Para. Although slavery cases tend to grab headlines, advocates say laborers typically face more quotidian abuse -- low pay, excessive work hours, inadequate safety gear, an absence of sanitary and health services, and exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals. "The cases analogous to slavery seem not to be the norm," said Tim Cahill, Brazil researcher for Amnesty International. "But this is very much a case of long work hours, the destruction of workers' health through extreme conditions, a lack of access to quality food, problems of accommodation, and the impacts of agro-toxins." The technological advances that have facilitated the biofuel revolution have not reached the fields. Although mechanized harvesting of cane is on the rise, rough terrain dictates that much of the crop must still be cut manually. Industry officials acknowledge some abuses, but insist that safety has improved and that the allegations of slavery are greatly exaggerated. "If there is an industry that has bettered the situation of the worker, it is the sugar cane industry," said Rodolfo Tavares of Brazil's National Confederation of Agriculture, a trade group. "It's an example for the world." With international scrutiny growing, leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says the government and producers are keen to ameliorate conditions. "Everyone knows that sugar cane labor is tough," Lula said in Rome this month during a food crisis summit at which biofuels were called a major culprit. But "it's not tougher than labor in coal mines, which was the basis for the development of Europe. Take a big knife to cut cane and then go down in a mine, 90 meters deep, to explode dynamite. You'll see which is better." Brazilian officials acknowledge that fines and prosecutions have largely failed to improve the workers' lot. Cases drag on in court until sanctions are reduced or owners cleared. Few, if any, violators go to jail. Too few inspectors are available to police this giant country and its behemoth agribusiness, which have made it a world leader in exports of soybeans, beef and coffee, among other foodstuffs. In the last year, Brazil has stepped up cases filed under antislavery statutes, which can land offenders in prison. Authorities say that last year they "liberated" nearly 6,000 agricultural workers from slave-like conditions, which under Brazilian law can include debt servitude, forced labor and a "degrading" work environment. More than half toiled in the sugar cane sector. "Brazilians only understand justice when they get arrested," said Goncalves, the labor investigator. "These days, slaves aren't necessarily chained." Interviewed workers agreed that conditions were harsh and hours long -- sometimes 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, inevitably beneath an unforgiving sun or drenching rain. Still, the workers said the pay was relatively good, typically the equivalent of between $420 and $550 a month, or up to double the minimum wage here for a 40-hour week. Like migrant farmworkers in many nations, they displayed a grudging acceptance of their plight and lack of employment alternatives. Field laborers attack so-called streets of cane using a machete-like tool known as a podao, which has been employed since colonial times, when millions of African slaves were imported for the European sugar trade. They constantly crouch to cut swaths of the cane and must negotiate paths through the thickets and step over the slippery stalks, advancing steadily into forest-like stretches of the stuff. "The job is tough, but that's the way it is," said Roberto Santos Lopes, 25, taking a break from chopping cane here. "Some of this cane is broken and twisted and it's harder to cut, so we earn less." A common complaint: Owners cheat them in measuring the amount of cane harvested, which determines earnings. Some of the cutters come here on their own; others are recruited by intermediaries known as gatos (cats) who provide transport, sometimes taking recruits 1,000 miles or more. Some cutters have moved to this region semipermanently, living in ramshackle company dormitories and commuting to work in grower-supplied buses. "In my town there are no jobs," said Vandailson dos Santos Silva, 22, from Pernambuco, traditionally one of Brazil's poorest states. "At least here we can find some work." Dos Santos, the eldest of seven siblings, said he first came to the cane fields here four years ago. A younger brother has since followed in his footsteps. He lives in a run-down company complex in the nearby town of Dois Corregos, a cane hub, and $50 a month is deducted from his paycheck for housing. The grower charges extra for food "and even some cachaca," Dos Santos added. The $370 or so he clears each month allows him to live modestly, send some cash home and even go out some evenings to dance and meet girls. "It's the best I can do with the little education I have," said Dos Santos on a recent balmy evening, standing in the frontyard of the dormitory he shares with other cane cutters. He said he would like to be able to study, even become a lawyer someday. But he acknowledged that such grandiose notions were unlikely to be fulfilled, saying, "We must be content with what we have." He then went back to his stuffy room, needing a good night's sleep before another day of harvesting Brazil's biofuel bounty. Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-biofuels16-2008jun16,0,1401738.story .
Excellent Commentary .................................................................................. Why do people all of a sudden have to complain about slave labor working sugar cane with regards to ethanol production? Why not candy, rum, and other usages of sugar. Latin America and the Caribbean are riddled with rusted out sugar plants, some of which are limping along.... Still using on farm labor.....etc... In the past....Hershey.....Mars....Gerber....and generalized packaging in just about every home in America.....in the past supported slave labor.... Why not write about....and journalize that....or will some other bogus stories be needed to further subsidize US produced sugar..... Make sure all other uses of sugar is totally left out of the story.... Just goes to show how futile and pointed and biased journalism is....
. June 16, 2008 SouthAmerica: Reply to Libertad You understand that I am being sarcastic when I said the government should do what they did in the past and send more displaced farm workers to help in the destruction of the Amazon area. In my opinion, the Brazilian government should do more to help protect the Amazon area from logging and other forms of destruction. Most of these farm workers are glad that they have a job in the ethanol industry â the same for the soybean workers, and the coffee workers. Without these jobs these people â most of them completely illiterate â would have no jobs at all. Some people will tell me that the government should educate these people, but the reality is that there are too many people to be educated in the population anyway, and not every body can become a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. The reality is a fair number of the population of any country are born stupid and they will die stupid, and there is nothing you can do about that. I am not trying to imply that all farm workers are stupid, but a fair share of them probably are, and they have a very limited amount of intelligence and these types of jobs are all they can find anywhere. These farming jobs have been done like that for hundreds of years, maybe the only difference is that today these people are exposed to pesticides on the fields, but how they can continue being farm harvesters and at the same time be protected from these pesticides hazards on the field? .
Excellent Commentary As Usual ..................................................................................... My personal opinion about sugar cane , in both Caribbean and non oil producing Latin countries is that it can act as an economic stabilizer both in terms of energy and monetary objectives....and can actually help food production.... People in the US and Europe do not have a clue as to how sensitive life is ....in developing countries where it is the norm for a family to earn $200 to $800 per month....Very small monetary increments mean a lot....There are many people just glad to have any type of work.... The reason for the post above was because I find it rather amusing that US journalists are trying to pick apart the Brazilian Energy success story. Perhaps the journalist knows nothing about sugar's past in the region.....and acts as if the sugar in food products is somehow a different product........ Keep up the excellent and informative postings....