Biofuel offers Brazilian farmers fair trade

Migrol is helping fair trade in Brazil Keystone

Fair trade organisation gebana has joined Switzerland's leading retailer, Migros, to market what it claims is the world's first ecological and fairly traded fuel.

Petrol pump operator Migrol – part of Migros – will buy green fuel from gebana at prices that allow farmers in Brazil to earn a living. The project has been praised for producing biofuels which do not harm the environment.

Swiss non-governmental organisation Alliance Sud gave its backing to the project because it avoids deforestation, ruining the soil by planting only one type of crop and interfering with staple food production.

Since 2002 Zurich-based gebana has been working together with over 350 families in Capanema, situated in the southwest of Brazil near to the famous Iguaco waterfalls. They provide expertise and support for farmers producing soya beans in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.

Now gebana has teamed up with Migrol to ensure that the farmers receive a fair price for the fruit of their labours.

This particular biofuel costs 60 centimes more per litre (SFr2.35 or $1.96) in Switzerland than conventional fuels. Swiss customers pay the excess while ordering the fuel online at the gebana website.

Migrol guarantees to buy the same amount of fuel as consumers order, and mixes it into its conventional fuel or diesel, allowing the customer to fill up at normal prices in the knowledge that some of the fair deal biofuel is going into their tank.

Biofuel expansion

gebana then distributes 30 centimes directly to the farmers, 23 centimes to meet development and marketing costs and seven centimes to help fund the project itself in Brazil.

“The basic concept is to allow farmers to earn a living from their production,” Gebana project leader Adrian Wiedmer told swissinfo.

“We started our work by helping farmers produce and sell mainly organic food products such as dried fruits and soya beans, but we recently saw an opportunity to expand into biofuels.

“We hit upon this idea after finding that we initially had to sell soya bean oil at very low prices on the markets.”

The issue of biofuels has been at the centre of an international debate with some critics saying the mass production of raw materials for biofuels causes more ecological damage than the fuels take away.

Warning sounded

Alliance Sud spokeswoman Rosmarie Bär warned that the global biofuel boom is bringing ecological problems to some countries, but said the gebana project avoids these pitfalls.

“We are giving the project a very positive assessment because it shows that there is another way,” she said. “It shows an alternative to the global biofuel production that comes with devastating ecological and social consequences.”

Migrol has a history of introducing green fuel products to Switzerland, including lead free petrol in 1984, ecologically friendly diesel in 1992 and a Greenlife label three years later. The firm is now committed to buying a maximum of 1.5 million litres of Brazilian biofuel each year.

“When gebana approached us with this project it seemed a natural progression for us,” Migrol head Daniel Furrer told swissinfo. “It is important to us that no forests are chopped down to produce the soya beans.”

gebana also hopes to expand the scheme to farmers in the African state of Burkina Faso where a farming community of 5,000 families is attempting to produce biofuel from local flora.

The project has also been praised by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco).

A study – funded by the government agency – concluded that the Brazilian biofuel, including its manufacture, produces 70 per cent fewer harmful emissions than conventional diesel.

swissinfo, Matthew Allen in Zurich

Key facts

gebana has been working with farmers in Capanema, Brazil, since 2002.
The organisation has 20 workers helping 350 small families produce organic soya beans.
The community can produce 1.5 million litres of biofuel per year with a projected capacity of 3 million litres by 2010.
In Burkina Faso 5,000 families could produce up to ten million litres by 2010.
The African project is still in its trial stage.

In brief

2006 figures revealed that vehicles in Switzerland currently consume 65% petrol, 34% diesel and 1% other fuels.

The US has announced it wants bioethanol to make up 10% of all car fuel consumption by 2010. Bioethanol fuel in Spain already accounts for 3% of the total consumption.

Biofuels contributed 0.3% of total energy consumption in EU countries in 2003. This rose to 2% last year. The EU wants to raise this level to 5.75% by the end of 2010.

France has the more ambitious goal of consuming 7% biofuels in 2010 and 10% in 2015.

However, the mass production of raw materials used to produce biofuels – including soya beans – has been criticised in some quarters for causing destruction of natural habitats. The amount of energy used during production has also fuelled the debate.