Michael Kanellos

Cattle ranches to ethanol fields May 7, 2008 at 11:22 AM

The cowman and the fuel baron can be friends.

Ethanol refiners in Brazil are snapping up pasture land currently owned by cattle ranchers, according to Pedro Seraphim, an attorney in the law firm of Tozzini Freire in Brazil. Seraphim has concluded a few of these transactions already. (He was in the U.S. on business so we chatted.)

“It’s a more productive use of the land,” he said. “Pastures have a very low return.”

Colonizing cattle ranches could also help get around some of the complaints about biofuels. Taking over cattle ranches, potentially, curbs some of the demand for cutting down virgin forests. Cattle ranchers are also some of the largest consumers of corn and soy. Fewer cattle ranches means less pressure on food prices.

Brazil has around 340 million hectares of arable land, according to Seraphim. Around 210 to 211 million are used for cattle ranching. 63 million hectares are used for food of the entire sugar crop. crops. 7.8 million hectares are dedicated to ethanol production, or about half of the overall sugar crop. (Ethanol refiners use the cane leftovers to run boilers at the plantation too.)

Brazil, of course, is bonkers for ethanol. Around 40 percent of the liquid fuel in the country consists of ethanol, according to the Brazil Institute. In 2007, the country produced 5 billion gallons of ethanol. A little over 71 percent of new cars are flex fuel cars while gas cars run on a blend of 76 percent gas/24 percent ethanol.

These are some relevant categories: Biofuel. You can follow comments on this post through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.