Production and use of fuel ethanol in Brazil - BAFF

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C2.4.
How are employment levels expected to evolve
in the face of increasing mechanization and
automation?
The Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira, or Sugar-Cane Technology Center, among
others, has assessed the impact of sugar-cane harvesting without burning on labor.
For a hypothetical future situation with a mechanization level of 100 percent in the
State of São Paulo and 50 percent in the rest of the country, there would be 165,000
jobs less than in the fully manual harvesting system based on the total number of
jobs in 2000. That process is in progress, and rapidly in São Paulo. Using the straw
as an energy source could create more jobs in the agricultural area if balers are used
(which is not defined as technology at the moment). Indirect jobs were not included
in the computation.
A large portion of the fall in direct agricultural jobs in the 1990’s was due to the
implementation of mechanical harvesting. Planting is being mechanized as well,
although the effect of it on jobs is much less significant. That employment leveldecreasing
effect was widely expected as early as 15 years ago, when the limitation
on sugar-cane burning began to be discussed, along with the resulting reduction of
manual sugar-cane harvesting. The great, ongoing expansion of the crop area is now
starting to extend outside the regions covered by existing plants; that expansion,
most of which already using mechanical technology, is using local labor and keeps
the absolute number of jobs in the business expanding as well.
As in the case of soybean, there have been improvements in jobs (more qualified
workers, such as machine operators in stead of sugar-cane reapers) and income in
the business.
C. Sugar-cane and ethanol production: social impacts