•900 million gallons: Amount of ethanol shipped by Brazil overseas in 2006 •$1.6 billion: Revenue generated by Brazil's ethanol Exports have risen because of increased demand from European countries that find it cheaper to import the product from Brazil than to make it from wheat and sugar beets Brazil – As dawn cracks over seemingly endless fields of sugar cane a ragged army of men and women sharpen their machetes to harvest the raw material for Brazil’s “white gold.” the cane cutters gather five 8-feet tall stalks in the crook of one arm bend over and cut them down with three swift machete whacks – a process they will repeat for as long as 12 hours a day “By the end of the day your entire body hurts so much you think you are going to die,” says cane cutter Raimundo Gomes da Silva Brazil’s pioneering use of sugar-cane-based ethanol which fuels about 30 percent of the country’s automobiles has made Latin America’s largest country a global leader alternative energy Getting less attention is the squalid labor conditions of nearly half a million people who toil in the fields six days a week to supply the cane to the nation and a growing export market “Ethanol is making a lot of people in this country very rich,” said Miguel Ferreira president of the union representing cane cutters in Batatais a town in Sao Paulo state’s vast sugar-cane belt “But all the cane cutters have seen are long hours of backbreaking work for very little pay.” The most productive cutters can earn a meager $420 a month they’ve seen their quotas nearly double in recent years to meet the rising demand “In the 1980s cane cutters had to cut some six to eight tons of cane a day many plantation owners are demanding 10 to 12 tons a day and those who do not meet their production targets are fired,” said Maria Cristina Gonzaga a researcher in the Labor Ministry’s Occupational Safety and Health Center cane cutters suffer a litany of bone and muscle injuries and machete cuts Their eyes and lungs are punished by ash as they labor through fields recently burned to facilitate cutting and to kill off rats Some 18 cane cutters died of exhaustion in the past three years in Sao Paulo state alone according to the Catholic Church’s Migrant Workers Pastoral And while dozens of sugar mills have been fined for violating labor laws Gonzaga says the Labor Ministry lacks the resources to solve the problem The ministry has an elite unit dedicated to freeing workers from debt slavery where ranchers and farmers force workers to pay exorbitant prices for basic goods and transportation But the unit shut down last month protesting “political interference” after lawmakers challenged its raid on Para Pastoril e Agricola SA The raid in the northern state of Para found more than 1,000 cutters working 13-hour days It was slapped with a $1.1 million fine and its directors charged with “submitting workers to conditions analogous to slavery.” they could be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail The unit’s shutdown leaves Brazil without an effective enforcement tool for conditions in the cane fields Labor ministry inspectors stationed in regional offices will try to take up the slack but they do not have the elite group’s training to deal with debt slavery cases blood and death bathe the sugar and alcohol made in Brazil,” Gonzaga said Most cane cutters in Batatais migrated from Brazil’s impoverished drought-ridden northeast attracted by wages they would never dream of earning back home cane cutters in the state of Sao Paulo earn more than the country’s minimum wage of $209 “I cut some 8 tons of cane every day and make about 600 reals ($315) a month,” said one such internal migrant “I used to make half as much as an assistant stonemason.” the country’s association of sugar and ethanol producers acknowledges working conditions in the cane fields have caused an image problem that could lead the European Union and the United States to refuse to import Brazilian ethanol until labor conditions are improved they have committed to shorter working hours and to provide better meals and more and better health and educational benefits for the workers and their families UNICA’s president Marcos Sawaya Jank said in an interview The EU is already considering ways to certify that imported Brazilian ethanol is produced with good labor and environmental practices Jank would support such efforts as long as they also apply to ethanol made from corn and sugar beets in other countries – and don’t amount to a barrier against Brazilian products “We definitely favor international certification attesting to the social environmental and labor sustainability of our ethanol,” Jank said But Jank also noted that machines are taking over the harvests about 40 percent of Brazil’s sugar cane is harvested by machine but that should rise to 70 percent by 2010 and 100 percent by 2015 And even though UNICA says it is committed to retraining the workers as machine operators and truck drivers “Unemployment among cane cutters is inevitable,” he said the government and trade unions will have to deal with.” Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below Gifts processed in this system are tax deductible Get breaking news delivered to your inbox as it happens © Copyright 2025, The Spokesman-Review | Community Guidelines | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy (ANS - Batatais) - Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga prelate emeritus of São Félix belonging to the Congregation of the missionaries Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Claretians) passed away on Saturday 8 August in Batatais prelate of São Félix from 1971 to 2005 was a well-known bishop and a point of reference for his battles in favor of human rights In 1971 he wrote the courageous pastoral letter "A Church in the Amazon at war against large estates and social exclusion" in which he denounced the evils that are more current than ever: land grabbing be considered a precursor of that sensitivity that gave life to the recent Synod for the Amazon He was a close friend of the Servant of God Fr Rodolfo Lunkenbein with whom he founded and collaborated in the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI) On 15 July 1976 Fr Lunkenbein and the Indian Simão were killed in the Salesian mission in Meruri and on the following 18 July Mgr Casaldáliga wrote in Meruri's Book of Condolences: “July 15 is a historic date in the history of the new Missionary Church Rodolfo and Simão are two other martyrs according to the word of Christ: the Indios gave his life for the missionary The missionary gave his life for the Indios this blood of Meruri is a commitment and a hope The Church will be indigenous!” A prophetic synthesis of a story of love and a cross to bear in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia Casaldáliga: “Shadows float from me But the star is born without reproach/over the expert hands of this child It has to be enough for me to know/that you know me completely from before my days.” (Carta de navegar - Pedro Casaldáliga); its aim: to emphasize and make the "relationship with God present in the cosmos into an increasingly personal relationship with a Thou who sustains our lives and wants to give them meaning ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007 This site also uses third-party cookies to improve user experience and for statistical purposes By scrolling through this page or by clicking on any of its elements Matrix composed of various indicators used to evaluate school performance Five cities in inland São Paulo State are using a method capable of flagging inequalities across their public education networks with simplified indication of schools posting outstanding performance and those in need of attention and interventions created by the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo (IEA-USP) is based on a matrix of indicators that reflect different dimensions of pedagogical development age-year distortion (number of students two or more years older than that expected for each school year) and their performance in mathematics and Portuguese language these measures demonstrate whether or not municipal public schools are overcoming the learning challenges and problems arising from the socioeconomic situation around them produced georeferenced maps of the cities of Ribeirão Preto in which schools are represented in these municipalities by colors summarizing their performance; from red (indicators requiring attention) “The aim is to improve the efficiency of educational management The methodology is based on statistical modeling and data science to inform education departments and administrators and facilitate the decision-making process,” explains chemical engineer Mozart Neves Ramos and incumbent of the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair which seeks out ways to contribute to public policies in medium-sized cities The method has been used since last year to assess students in the 5th and 9th year of elementary education (6–15 years) and enabled comparison between performance evolution at the schools between 2017 and 2019 helping administrators to identify issues and their causes the chair’s data analysis group coordinator says that one of the differentials of this method is the focus on small and medium-sized municipalities and the use of statistics to analyze the relationship between different educational indicators “The aim is to gauge the inequality of performance in a network,” he explains The next step in the initiative will be to apply the methodology for the first time in a big city — the São Paulo municipal education network — providing a more accurate diagnosis of educational inequalities across the 13 administrative regions of the municipality A partnership agreement has been signed between the chair and the São Paulo Municipal Education Department the diagnosis also helps to assess whether the causes of poor performance come from within or outside the school “When a school is located in a community with high rates of violence or drug use The children live under stress,” he states Ramos goes on to emphasize that these solutions are not necessarily simple “The diagnosis allows the department to assess whether there is a management problem problems are frequently associated with a scarcity of teachers qualified in certain subjects math teachers have to give physics and chemistry classes.” Chair researchers analyzed data from the network of 109 municipal schools in Ribeirão Preto a city in the northeast of São Paulo State with a population of more than 700,000 a drop in the performance of one of these units when comparing indicators from 2017 and 2019 The percentage of students with satisfactory learning in the Portuguese language plummeted from 93% to 77% The researchers visited the college and found that during this time frame Portuguese and math teachers had been moved into management roles and replaced by other less experienced teachers Another important factor was that in this period the school did not run an enrollment selection process taking on local students at different learning levels 57 km from the São Paulo state capital and with a population of 423,000 a municipal school network of 104 schools and 38,000 students improvements were seen in performance across the educational facilities attributed to a public policy developed over the two most recent mayoral terms This is down to the “school unwalling” method aimed at adapting elementary-level education curricula to get students outside the classroom and closer to nature and the city in which they live in addition to using digital technologies to put them in virtual contact with museum collections from other countries this methodology has helped to demonstrate how much each school has been able to draw on the pedagogical proposal “It was a nice surprise to see a school that had an average external assessment score below 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10) improve and score 8 after they started to work with the unwalling methodology,” says the secretary “When I ask a school’s management what happened they very clearly respond that they put the children to work with aspects of nature to improve their scientific repertoire using recreational strategies to improve their level of writing and held monthly meetings with teachers to address issues at the school and monitor the performance of each pupil,” she explains Ferrari goes on to say that at schools that underwent internal changes where the methodology was still in the implementation phase she witnessed a shift in the performance measured using the IEA-USP Chair method such as the retirement of experienced teachers and their replacement by younger ones where it is not always possible to reproduce strategies already in place,” she says is to spread the word on the solutions and innovations adopted successfully among schools experiencing difficulties “This knowledge needs to be shared across the whole network and data- and evidence-based methodology gives a solid basis to show what is working well.” the methodology has become a tool for monitoring the performance of 14 elementary education units The school network has also benefited from a supplementary initiative by the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair in the form of an introductory course in educational data analysis for school principals and managers instructing on how to obtain and interpret information and use it in decision-making “Managers are not generally prepared to analyze data Our primary education coordinator took the course and immediately began to apply the knowledge to our network,” explains Cordeirópolis education secretary Angelita Ortolan today we can run very specific evaluations and analyze the difficulties experienced by each school enabled 33 managers from across 10 municipalities and an in-person edition last year in Ribeirão Preto qualified 29 people from 17 towns and cities “We want our managers to independently obtain and analyze the data The idea behind this type of training is to spread a data-analysis culture,” says Ruggiero who coordinates the offer of these courses for the Chair The strategy is now enshrined in municipal legislation in Cordeirópolis and Batatais the two city halls approved laws instituting public evidence-based education policies in their municipal systems “A law of this kind is essential for the municipality to implement educational actions based on scientific research and studies and reducing educational inequalities,” says Victor Hugo Junqueira whose educational network covers 4,500 students across eleven schools and nine crèches is that consolidated research groups can help to improve the quality of education “If managers don’t support those dealing with the numbers everything ends up being based on guesswork and the children don’t learn,” says Mozart Ramos an aficionado of data use in the formulation of educational policies since his time as executive president of the movement Todos pela Educação (All for Education); Ramos is currently a member of the FAPESP Board of Trustees Lira says that the strategy was born of efforts to understand why the performance of Brazilian students in math generally becomes stagnant or declines during the final years of middle-level education and during high school contrary to what happens with other subjects “Our student assessments revealed that the low levels of consolidation in certain basic knowledge areas such as how to deal with arithmetic operations Another finding is that failings in teacher qualification contribute to the issue — not all have instructional mathematics tools to help the students After identifying the basic knowledge areas presenting difficulties for students the teachers collaborate to formulate didactic sequences to resume and review content “We produce structured materials that can be adapted to the different learning pathways and offer suggestions on how to implement them.” The outcome of this strategy based on assessment of over 300,000 pupils from the three years of high school education there was no drop in performance in math among state-network students during social isolation and exams demonstrated that bottlenecks currently faced by students are related to more complex high school education content and no longer to those at primary/middle level — a notable qualitative improvement,” concludes Lira The story above was published with the title “The educational inequality map” in issue 342 of august/2024 © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved. Share via...Gift this articleSubscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe It’s been a tough year for commodity traders given just a handful of raw materials have offered outsized gains and Citi is predicting a similar scenario faces investors in the year ahead While cocoa and coffee have been the clear standouts in 2024 gold and silver also posted respectable gains of around 30 per cent coking coal and iron ore were among the biggest laggards SaveLog in or Subscribe to save articleShareCopy link Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you. Morre Dom Pedro Casaldáliga Plá - Bárbara Lopes a Catholic missionary and an iconic voice of liberation theology He was the Bishop Emeritus of the Prelature of São Félix do Araguaia and famous for his defense of the rights of the indigenous people of Brazil He died of a pulmonary embolism at the Santa Casa de Batatais Hospital in the State of São Paulo Dom Pedro Casaldáliga Plá was admitted to the hospital after complaining of respiratory problems He had earlier been admitted to the Hospital São Félix do Araguaia in the State of Mato Grosso Casaldáliga also had Parkinson's Disease and had contracted pneumonia when he was young which severely affected his respiratory system Dom Pedro Casaldáliga Plá was born to a peasant family in a small town in the province of Barcelona he published the Pastoral Letter “The Church of the Amazon in conflict with large landowners and social marginalization.” The letter highlighted analyzed the situation of slavery and violence suffered by the peoples and communities in the Amazon It denounced the environmental problems they faced as well as the genocide of the Indigenous people carried out by large land-owners with complicity from the military government in Brazil The letter and his work gained him great renown as a spokesperson of the Indigenous people and peasants The Bishop was also one of the founders of the Indigenous Missionary Council and of the Pastoral Land Commission These organizations today continue to work in defense of the rights of the Indigenous people traditional communities and agricultural workers Dom Pedro Casaldáliga Plá’s public positions and work in this area led to him receiving many death threats.  In addition to his work with the poor and in defense of democracy Casaldáliga was also famous for his poetry which addressed the urgent need for agrarian reform “We lost a prophet and a poet” Brazil’s social leaders mourned his death and vowed to carry on his struggle. Theologian Leonardo Boff wrote “Dom Pedro Casaldáliga ..lives in the memory of all the poor that he defended and in our faith and in our hope that he strengthened.” João Pedro Stedile, a member of the national board of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, said “It is a very sad day for the Brazilian people in particular for the rural movements and the people of faith We lost the Great Dom Pedro Casaldáliga who I was privileged to call a friend.” Erika Kokay, federal deputy from the Workers’ Party of Brazil (PT) tweeted, “It is with immense sadness that I receive the news of the passing of Dom Pedro Casaldáliga, tireless fighter for the rights of Indigenous people and rural workers. What remains is his immense legacy and the certainty that we will continue his struggle for a more just Brazil.” All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. All original content produced and editorially authored by Brasil de Fato may be reproduced, provided it is not altered and proper credit is given. This was unusual – given that he was languishing in a Rio de Janeiro jail awaiting charges on robbery and drug trafficking.Brazilian footballer Heltton Matheus was caught for identity theft while playing for Paulista Source: Twitter Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España.Get the latest with our sport podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.Watch on SBS SportSport News Vancouver FC has continued its midseason recruitment drive of experience players with the addition of Brazilian midfielder Renan Garcia, while Gael Sandoval departs the team The 37-year-old arrives to Willoughby Community Park as the club’s most experienced player having featured for the likes of Atletico Mineiro and most recently Brazilian lower league side Batatais “Renan is a seasoned professional who can help to shape our culture at Vancouver FC,” says VFC boss Afshin Ghotbi, who has already brought in more experience this summer with the additions of Mikael Cantave and Alejandro Diaz and I have many experiences,” says the club’s newest recruit “Coming to North America and Canada is a challenge for me While Vancouver FC occupies the basement level of league standings the club points out that Renan has been part of big rises before: he was part of the Sampdoria side who won promotion into Italy’s top flight in 2012 remaining with the club for a further two years before a move to the United Arab Emirates Having since returned to his native Brazil he’s excited to play abroad once more and experience what life is like in Canada Afshin Ghotbi’s inaugural team has leaned young, boasting the league’s youngest-ever player signing and an average age of just 23 The first four seasons of the league saw clubs generally shy away from signing veteran talent, though this summer window has now seen both Vancouver FC and Atletico Ottawa buy in to seasoned veterans with European experience. Like Alejandor Diaz, Renan Garcia is eligible for this weekend’s away match against Atletico Ottawa. Header Image Photo Credit: Beau Chevalier / Vancouver FC Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Tests show how the artist produced his artwork and may be useful in confirming the author of a piece found in the painter’s former home Hidden details in a mural Images of different wavelengths reveal cracks and how the painter created the figure of Saint Elizabeth With inspiration for the face from the painter’s wife, Maria Martinelli, the saint had various retouches before taking its final form. Its waist was wider, as indicated by the arrow in the infrared image (above and to the right), which reveals Portinari’s initial draftPedro Campos In 2018, a study discovered that Pablo Picasso hid a newspaper article in one of his paintings Pedro Campos A canvas with 25 superimposed colors used to study the effects of the superimposition of paintsPedro Campos Pedro Campos A mural discovered in the Casa de Portinari Museum in Brodowski is being studied to determine the authorPedro Campos One of the physicist’s key objectives was to understand why the blue used by Portinari was deteriorating in a strange way “When we applied material to do a superficial cleaning the painting became opaque,” explains White de Vera The blue used by Portinari is comprised of cobalt or cobalt with tin a substance that holds the pigment particles together Rizzutto collected a blue-pigmented shaving that had fallen off of a canvas and took it for analysis some of which was carried out at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory in Campinas we finally concluded that the whitening is caused by the breakdown of the binder and not of the pigment itself,” says Rizzutto Studying pigments superimposed on a canvas is one of the greatest challenges faced by researchers Some X-ray and infrared imaging techniques have the capacity to identify superimposed works It is not always possible to distinguish in the study results if the color is on top of or below the overlay researchers of NAP-FAEPAH decided to produce paints with superimposed pigments to serve as a benchmark who did her master’s thesis under Rizzutto’s guidance painted a standard canvas where a set of 25 pigments were superimposed “This type of analysis can be used to determine the thickness of a layer of superimposed paint on a canvas and thus discover whether it was modified or falsified,” explains Mori The characteristics of the pigments on the reference painting were described in an article published on November 20 primarily authored by the physicist Daniela Balbino from the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS) © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved Brazilians own a farm in the Alta Mogiana region in São Paulo and process and roast their own beans there São Paulo – Brazilian brand Ducoffee has just started a new project in the United Arab Emirates: a private-label coffee called Amazing. Besides being sold in Dubai, the packages will be distributed in South Korea and Spain, too. “The brand is ready, and I’ve sent them the first lot. Everything, including the Arabic packages, are made here [in Brazil] and registered in the UAE,” Ducoffee founder Gilberto Antonio Jorge told ANBA The Brazilians are now taking the brand to the 2021 Gulfood This year’s edition is scheduled for February 21-25 “We’ll participate together with the Brazilian pavilion of Gulfood as the coffee beans are from Brazil,” explained Jorge The booth will only feature the brand developed for the UAE The Brazilian company has exported to and had private labels in the Middle East since 2006 everyone in Africa and the Middle East are based in Dubai,” explains Jorge who divides his time between Dubai and São Paulo but stayed in Brazil during the pandemic daughters-in-law and wife supporting him in different departments Ducoffee participated in events to probe around We sold them to a coffeeshop chain in Abu Dhabi and several middle- and small-sized markets in Dubai.” Depending on the volume the company can even send some shipments via the Emirates airline The brand was present in the Brazilian Coffee Week at the Dubai Museum late last year “We have an agent in Dubai that does distribution the Brazilian company also manufactures an Emirati private label The focus is selling single-source coffees so we can make as many packages as we need,” he said on the framework that makes it possible to have a private label for small- and middle-sized customers the brand also sells coffee and rent its machines “Coffee has become a big business in Brazil too,” he explains on the sales via WhatsApp and the machine rental business The Gulf country has deposited its instrument of acceptance of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies which is aimed at curbing harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing and promoting the sustainable management of global marine resources The Brazil-Arab News Agency (ANBA) is the news website of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce Its goal is to promote communication between Brazilians and Arabs Champions Valletta have stepped up their recruitment process after securing the services of Brazilian midfielder Douglas Packer The 32-year-old had been in Malta for the past few days and reached an agreement to sign a one-year contract with the Citizens Douglas started his career at Robur Siena but spent the past eight seasons in his homeland playing for Botafogo The veteran midfielder becomes Valletta's second signing in the close season after on Monday they had tied up Kevin Tulimieri who arrived at the capital club from rivals Ħamrun Spartans Both Tulimieri and Douglas are now expected to be part of the City team that is preparing for their Champions League qualifier against Luxembourg side F91 Dudelange Valletta are currently giving a trial to another Brazilian player The 22-year-old is an agile lateral forward who last season was on the books of Brazilian club Batatais Valletta coach Darren Abdilla is expected to have a closer look at Thales' qualities this week when Valletta face Hibernians in a friendly on Thursday Should Thales impress the Citizens he is unlikely to be eligible to play for the Citizens in next week's Champions League first qualifying round tie against F91 Dudelange please register for free or log in to your account.