Agriculture's Energy

Thomas D. Rogerss history of a modernizing Brazil tracks what happened when a key government program,created in the 1970s by the nations military regime, aspired to harness energy produced by sugarcane agriculture to power the countrys economy. The National Alcohol Program, known as Prolcool, was a deliberate economic strategy designed to incentivize ethanol production and reduce gasoline consumption. As Brazils capacity grew and as international oil shocks continued, the regimes planners doubled down on Prolcool. Drawing financing from international lenders and curiosity from other oil-dependent countries, for a time it was the worlds largest oil-substitution and renewable-energy program.Chronicling how Prolcool experimented with and exemplified the consolidation of government, agribusiness, large planters, agricultural and chemical research companies, and oil producers, this book expands into a rich investigation of the arc of Brazils Green Revolution. The ethanol boom epitomized the vector of that arc, but Rogers keeps wider development imperatives in view. He dramatizes the choices and trade-offs that ultimately resulted in a losing energy strategy, for Prolcool ended up creating a large contingent of impoverished workers, serious environmental degradation, and persistent hunger. The full consequences of the Green Revolutionfueled consolidation continue to take a toll today.