‘Brazilian treatment’ hurts

EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel, admitted last week that even if her severe sugar industry reform proposals are accepted fully, and the EU sugar industry becomes lean and competitive, EU manufacturers will never be able to offer lower sugar prices than the Brazilians, backed as they are by huge resources of land and labour.

Brazilian sugar workers get €77 per month.

As for land prices, Brazil is one of the few countries with its own word for the grabbing of land by fraud and violence, the “grilagem” which has enabled the “grileiros”, the loggers, ranchers and businessmen backed by private militias and gunmen, to get nearly half of the country’s land into the hands of just 1% of the population.