land will be converted elsewhere to replace the growing of food or animal feed with the production of more ethanol. As the U.S. moves towards producing more ethanol from corn, other crops such as soybean and wheat are declining and their prices are increasing. When U.S. agricultural exports decline, other crop-export coun tries like Brazil are encouraged to fill the global demand gap. North American farmers are selling one fifth of their corn to ethanol pro duction and soybean farmers are switching to corn. Brazilian soy bean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures as cattle ranchers move towards the Amazon, caus ing more deforestation.
Water Pollution A cattle farm at Estância Bahia.. Source: Greenpeace / Daniel Beltr
The UN has already identified 60 million people (globally) at risk of displacement by biofuels.
8 | Biofuels
the Brazilian government chose this region as the main expansion area for sugarcane plantations; now two-thirds of the Cerrado has been degraded. Land-use change is also affected indirectly by the close relationship between ethanol production in the United States and deforestation around the world. Irrevocably, more
About 2% of global irrigation water is currently used for growing crops to make biofuels. Water is used both for irrigation and during the biofuel production phase in refineries. Cul tivating sugarcane is water inten sive, and the north-eastern parts of Brazil often suffer from droughts. Sugarcane plantations need to be irrigated as well. Fewer artificial irrigation systems are needed in Brazil since the majority of crops are rain-fed. To produce one liter of bioethanol in Brazil from sugarcane requires 1,150 liters, whereas in India it requires up to 3,500 liters.