Brazil's sugar exports are set to fall 1/2-1 million tonnes to about 20 million tonnes in the season to end-April, an executive of Cosan, Brazil's biggest sugar and ethanol producer, said on Tuesday.
Marcos Lutz, Cosan's Chief Commercial Officer, said the decrease was due to a growing amount of Brazilian sugar heading for domestic ethanol production and because of India's current sugar surplus.
Speaking on the sidelines of an ethanol conference in Amsterdam, he said centre/south Brazilian cane crushing was set to grow to 417-420 million tonnes in 2007/08, from an estimated 380 million tonnes in 2006/07.
But more of the cane crushing was set to be funnelled into ethanol biofuel production, with the ethanol industry likely to use 55 percent in 2007/08, compared to 50 percent in 2006/07.
"The focus went from sugar to ethanol," he told Reuters. Lutz hit back at biofuels critics who say using crops to make fuel is causing poor people to go hungry. He saw it as a chance to aid industrial development in poorer countries. "Bioethanol is a new opportunity for countries with little assets to grow and bridge the (poverty) gap," Lutz said.
Lutz also downplayed concerns that the bioethanol industry would encourage agriculture to encroach on rainforest land for crop cultivation, saying that the land was unsuitable. "The proper land for cane is not in the Amazon where you have bad logistics and bad weather." He added, "In Brazil, it's not economically possible. If it rains, you stop crushing, so you would stop crushing every day on that land."
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