PORTO NACIONAL, Brazil — For the better part of his 64 years, Sebastian Luis de Sousa has scratched out a meager living in the paprika-red soil of central Brazil.
So when offered a chance to grow castor beans to produce an alternative fuel called biodiesel, the rawboned father of nine reckoned he had nothing to lose. The $200 he earned this summer from his tiny harvest wasn't much. But rising demand for renewable fuels has De Sousa wanting to expand his 7 1/2 -acre farm.
"I want to buy more land," he said, rolling a prickly castor bean seedpod in his calloused palm. "This is an important thing that Brazil is doing."
Already the world's largest producer of ethanol, Brazil is now betting on biodiesel, with an eye to helping small farmers like De Sousa capitalize on what some see as the next big thing in green energy. Derived from animal fats or vegetable oils, this substitute for petroleum diesel is generating ten of millions of dollars from investors.
Major companies, including U.S. agribusiness behemoth Archer Daniels Midland Co., are building production plants, encouraged by a federal mandate requiring every liter of diesel fuel sold in Brazil to contain 2% biodiesel by 2008, rising to 5% by 2013.
Brazil's state-owned petroleum giant, Petrobras, is already selling a fuel blend with 2% biodiesel at hundreds of its retail gas stations. The company is investing in manufacturing facilities. It is also patenting a fuel known as H-Bio that it says will save millions of barrels of oil by using vegetable oil in the refining process to create a low-polluting petroleum diesel.
Even McDonald's Corp. has collaborated with Brazilian researchers looking to power vehicles with recycled French fry grease from its restaurants.
The involvement of big players is crucial if Brazil hopes to reach its goal of embracing biodiesel on a massive scale. Current production is modest but is projected to jump to 840 million liters by 2008, which would put Brazil among the world's large producers. Still, officials aim to involve more subsistence farmers such as De Sousa, who have yet to profit from the nation's biofuel bonanza.
No country has been more successful at displacing fossil fuels with green energy than Brazil. Hammered by the oil shocks of the 1970s, the nation committed itself to developing a domestic ethanol industry to reduce its dependence on imported petroleum.
