When Farm Work Disappears: Labor and Environmental Change in the Brazilian Sugar-energy Industry

• In Event: 241 - Regular Session. Environmental Sociology 1

Abstract

What motivates biofuels producers to adopt ‘green’ technology that reduces the carbon footprint of production? While ecological modernization proponents argue that a blend of environmental awareness and market-driven signals provide sufficient incentives, their critics argue that such ‘green’ capitalism is only viable by creating new externalities that intensify extraction and pollution. Lost in this ongoing debate is the question of labor as a contributing factor to environmental change and de-carbonization. This paper asserts that for biofuels, such as sugar-ethanol and oil palm, labor is crucial for structuring the ecological impact of production. Using the Brazilian sugar-energy industry as a case study, I examine why mills undertook two transformative changes in farming: the replacement of farmworkers with mechanical harvesters and the abandonment of pre-harvest field burning. I draw evidence from interviews with sixty-one mill managers, variety breeders, and producer syndicate officials in three Brazilian states. Through this examination of elite decision-making, I interrogate key claims from techno-optimistic and sociological theories of environmental change on how and why producers adopt new practices for ecological sustainability. Evidence shows that when ‘green’ technology is labor substitutable, the primary motivation for its adoption is to resolve labor challenges, with environmental preservation a peripheral concern. I find that, in Brazil, the rising costs of farm labor and difficulties recruiting farmworkers were the main reasons mills mechanized harvesting and stopped field burning. Overall, this paper is an empirics-based account of how an emerging market economy seeks to balance climate change mitigation with an active development agenda.

Author

• Ian Robert Carrillo, University of Wisconsin