English

mardi 31 -

lundi 30 -

(New York) – Iranian authorities should immediately release dozens of labor and independent trade union activists imprisoned for speaking out peacefully in defense of workers, Human Rights Watch said today. Convictions solely for the peaceful exercise of freedom of association and assembly should be quashed, and charges should be dropped against others facing prosecution for these reasons, Human Rights Watch said.

jeudi 26 -

A TWO-YEAR pilot sugarcane block farming project will be implemented to consolidate small farms owned by agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in 12 sugar-producing provinces, including Negros Occidental.

mercredi 25 -

NATIONAL Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) Secretary General Butch Lozandi called the Food Security Program of Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr. under his Negros First Agenda a sham and is anti-poor.

jeudi 19 -

lundi 16 -

 Sitting in the shade under a tree at a careful distance, Francisco Sosa watches his son prepare the land for planting by spraying the weeds with an herbicide from a tank carried on his back.

samedi 14 -

Sugarcane growers have opposed plan by the ministry of agriculture to have them contracted to particular millers.

samedi 7 -

Palm Beach County, the nation’s largest sugar cane producer, has the crop on nearly 400,000 of its 468,000 acres of farmland. Above is sugar stored at the Fanjuls’ Okeelanta Mill near South Bay.

vendredi 6 -

IBM is helping Kenyan sugar cane cutters through its social innovation support of a mobile banking system. It enables these workers to earn more money.

jeudi 5 -

SAO PAULO (AP) — Nearly 300 employers in South America’s biggest country submit workers to slave-like conditions, Brazil’s Labor Ministry said Tuesday.

samedi 31 -

Thirty employees of Murton’s Cane Contractors (MCC) in Big Bend have been dismissed from the company.

jeudi 22 -

Kenyan sugar cane cutters are earning more money because of a mobile phone banking system supported by IBM.

mercredi 21 -

LAHORE : The parliamentary party of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), adopting a unique tactic to support and highlight the demands of poor sugarcane farmers, launched a barefoot protest against the provincial government outside the Punjab Assembly on Tuesday.

mercredi 21 -

LEGAZPI CITY, Dec. 21 (PIA) -– The country’s bioethanol industry has the potential of generating about 180,000 jobs and generate foreign exchange savings of nearly US$ 800 million by 2015, according to the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

dimanche 18 -

Hundreds of sugarcane farmers took out a protest procession and blocked many main and link roads of the industrial city as a mark of protest against the brutal murder of a villager over the dispute of sugarcane prices

vendredi 16 -

The burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest for ethanol production can create air pollution that detracts from the biofuel’s overall sustainability, according to research published recently by a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Merced.

vendredi 16 -

Private cane growers from Kakamega have accused Mumias Sugar Company of harassment. The farmers claim Mumias is forcefully taking privately owned cane while on transit. Mumias Sugarcane Farmers Association chairman Simon Wesechere claimed that farmers incur loses close to Sh0.5 billion every year following the illegal activities by the miller.

vendredi 16 -

Private cane growers from Kakamega have accused Mumias Sugar Company of harassment. The farmers claim Mumias is forcefully taking privately owned cane while on transit. Mumias Sugarcane Farmers Association chairman Simon Wesechere claimed that farmers incur loses close to Sh0.5 billion every year following the illegal activities by the miller.

jeudi 15 -

According to a new report, hundreds of sugarcane workers are dying in Central America as a result of of a strange kidney disease, without any serious investigation being carried out as to the cause.

mardi 13 -

LA ISLA, Nicaragua — Maudiel Martinez is 19 years old and has a shy smile, a tangle of curly black hair and a lean, muscular build shaped by years of work in the sugarcane fields. For most of his adolescence, he was healthy and strong and spent his days chopping tall stalks of cane with his machete.

mardi 13 -

A mysterious epidemic is sweeping Central America - it’s the second biggest cause of death among men in El Salvador, and in Nicaragua it’s a bigger killer of men than HIV and diabetes combined. It’s unexplained but the latest theory is that the victims are literally working themselves to death.

novembre 2011

jeudi 3 -

High rates of chronic kidney disease in Quezalguaque, Nicaragua, Brookline’s sister city, are proving difficult to solve for a team of medical students and doctors from Brookline and Boston University.

mercredi 2 -

MALAYBALAY CITY, Bukidnon, Nov. 2 (PIA) — To help sugarcane workers during “off season,” the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has put up the Sugar Workers Livelihood Training Center (SWLTC) in the Provincial Capitol Compound, here, last Oct. 28.

mardi 1er -

PANRUTI : Depressed by crop failure, a 35-year-old sugarcane farmer committed suicide on Sunday night, along with his wife, after killing his two children, aged five and three, at Vegakollai village near Panruti, where the bodies were found hanging from a tree in a dense cashew grove.

octobre 2011

mercredi 19 -
l'article...

jeudi 13 -
Business World
l'article...

mercredi 28 -
l'article...

September 2011

Saturday 10 -
Reuter Africa
the article...

mardi 6 -
EFE
l'article...

mardi 6 -
l'article...

Saturday 3 -
Guardian
the article...

Friday 2 -
IUF
the article...

August 2011

Tuesday 30 -
the article...

Thursday 25 -
the article...

Friday 12 -

SUGARCANE growers have angered environmentalists by winning six weeks to convince the national regulator they should be able to continue to use the weed-killing pesticide Diuron, branded a major threat to the Great Barrier Reef and the nation’s waterways.

Tuesday 2 -

Residents said the mass deaths of fish and other marine life at Thuy Trieu lagoon began when Cam Ranh Sugar Plant started operations. The plant, which has a processing capacity of 6,000 tonnes of sugarcane a day, discharges untreated or insufficiently treated wastewater in the sea, they said.

Monday 1 -

Four people were killed the morning of July 28 when provincial police forcibly evicted some 700 families from land they had been occupying in the city of Libertador General San Martín in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy. The police and the squatters confronted each other with clubs and rocks during the eviction, and the police agents reportedly used tear gas and both rubber and lead bullets.

Saturday 23 -

Sugarcane workers claimed ownership of a 2,930-hectare farm land in Nasugbu, Batangas, following the Supreme Court’s final ruling that upheld the distribution of land titles to 1,301 farmers almost two decades ago.

Wednesday 20 -

Land-Grabbing is slowly becoming a serious problem in Tanzania with the poor being turned into landless citizens in their own country in the name of foreign investors.

vendredi 15 -

Nairobi — Mboya Iyadi’s payment number was 211. At 3 pm, he stood patiently, yawning in the queue as he stared at the gathering clouds signalling a huge downpour.

dimanche 10 -

Biofuel has been acclaimed as the best way out for the world’s struggle for energy resources. It has also been pointed out as a ‘green’ alternative which can reduce carbon emissions. An analysis made by the NGO Reporter Brasil [pt], last May, of the Brazilian ethanol chain of production reveals however that biofuels can have a high socio-environmental cost :

samedi 2 -

June 2011

Friday 24 -

ILOILO CITY, June 24 (PNA) - About 2,000 protesters allied with different sugar organizations have staged a vociferous rally in front of the Coca-Cola Bottlers office in Bacolod City on Tuesday accusing the giant soft drinks company of further emasculating the country’s ailing sugar industry to the detriment of some 5 million Filipinos who depend on sugar for their livelihood.

mercredi 22 -

The desperate situation of the poverty-stricken workers in the sugar cane fields in Swaziland, who harvest the sugar cane that is the most important ingredient of African Coke, on the other hand, is a well kept secret.

mercredi 15 -

Africa has suffered more from the scourge of AIDS than anywhere else on earth since the first case of HIV was diagnosed three decades ago.

lundi 13 -

The Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) is appealing to workers for their continued cooperation to maximize sugar production, in light of the current wet weather. A release from the corporation says harvesting at Skeldon has been ruled out, due to its dependence on mechanization.

dimanche 12 -

dimanche 5 -

An international fact-finding team is in the country to investigate the alleged land-grabbing by Philippine, Japanese and Taiwanese companies of some 11,000 hectares from indigenous peoples in Isabela to build the biggest bio-ethanol project in the Philippines.

dimanche 5 -

The state labour ministry’s proposal to set up a board for sugarcane labourers, which will protect their rights and implement welfare schemes for them, is still awaiting approval of the state finance department, said labour minister Hasan Mushrif while speaking to the TOI on Monday.

lundi 30 -

Brazil is emerging onto the world stage as one of the newly powerful economic engines, but conflict between members of the indigenous Guarani Indians and farmers and ranchers have resulted in a series of displacements and evictions.

samedi 28 -

SCORES of sugarcane farmers yesterday left Port of Spain disappointed after Government failed to give them assurances of compensation.

dimanche 22 -

vendredi 20 -

Phnom Penh - A member of the European Parliament said Friday she would push for the European Union to suspend trade preferences for Cambodian sugar after meeting villagers who had been evicted to make way for huge concessions.

lundi 16 -

On January 25, 2011, on the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the Ethiopian Pastoralist Day, Meles Zenawi (il duce dei TPLF [TPLF’s Mussolini]) gave a speech in Jinka about pastoralism and development for pastoral communities.

mardi 10 -

Buzi — Workers of a sugar company that closed down in 1994 on Monday told Mozambican President Armando Guebuza that they have been waiting for their redundancy pay since 1994.

lundi 9 -

HOUSING Minister Soita Shitanda has protested harassment of cane farmers by APs in Western province. Shitanda said he will seek audience with Internal Security minister George Saitoti over what he termed misuse of the APs by miller "In case a farmer harvests sugarcane developed by a certain miller and sells it to a different miller, the aggrieved miller should seek redress in court through a civil procedure and not using police to harass the farmer," said Shitanda.

dimanche 8 -

NAIROBI (AlertNet) - Kenyan companies are starting to produce paper from sugarcane waste in a move environmentalists hope will reduce illegal logging, reverse deforestation and help slow the effects of climate change.

jeudi 21 -

Why is an anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization helping Coke market its products in Africa and Latin America ?

mardi 19 -

THE Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP)-Northern Mindanao will lead farmers in the region in a protest dubbed as “Kalbaryo sa Kabus” (Calvary of the Poor) on Tuesday.

lundi 18 -

MBABANE, Apr 18, 2011 (IPS) - The previously impoverished community of Malibeni, previously ravaged by drought, is bustling with farmers who have transformed the area into a bread basket. Lush green fields of sugarcane and vegetables have replaced an expanse of dry shrubs near this community in northeastern Swaziland.

samedi 16 -

The Kenya Sugarcane Growers Association (Kesga) is demanding for the dissolution of the Kenya Sugar Board citing gross management decisions it has made to the detriment of farmers

samedi 16 -

A Usina Viralcool Açúcar e Álcool Ltda., com unidades em Sertãozinho, Pitangueiras e Castilho, foi condenada a elaborar e executar o Plano de Assistência Social (PAS) em benefício dos trabalhadores industriais e agrícolas. A decisão, do Tribunal Regional Federal da 3ª Região (TRF3), atende ao pedido do Ministério Público Federal de Ribeirão Preto.

samedi 16 -

Dejaron de quemar la caña para la cosecha, tienen un uso adecuado del suelo y el agua y cumplen con todas las leyes laborales del país. Esto, hace que la empresa Caña Brava haya logrado la certificación ISCC, por SGS de Alemania y se convierta en la primera en obtenerla en Sudamérica.

vendredi 15 -

Dois Córregos - Por meio de liminar concedida em ação civil ajuizada pelo Ministério Público (MP), a Justiça de Dois Córregos (73 quilômetros de Bauru) determinou na última terça-feira a imediata paralisação das atividades da empresa Cereale Brasil Agroindustrial, que vinha operando no município sem as licenças ambientais obrigatórias

mercredi 13 -

Sugar can be produced from both sugar beet and sugarcane. Sugarcane production is of particular concern in terms of environmental degradation and human rights abuses, reports William McLennan

mercredi 13 -

Mecanização da colheita da cana exige profissionalização. Senar oferece diversos cursos em SP ; confira a lista.

mardi 12 -

Cerca de 1,5 mil trabalhadores da Usina Floralco Açúcar e Álcool Ltda, de Flórida Paulista, no interior de São Paulo, entram hoje no sexto dia de greve. Os cortadores de cana da usina paralisaram as atividades na última quarta-feira, devido a erros no pagamento de salários, de férias que não foram corrigidos e em protesto contra a falta de equipamentos de proteção individual.

lundi 11 -

The smell of burning sugar cane has become, for the inhabitants of a residential area in La Garita, Alajuela, unbearable.For such a neighbour went to the Constitutional Court and filed an injunction against the company doing the burning.

lundi 11 -

Sugar may seem innocuous enough, but sweet-toothed Western consumers could be fuelling conflict between poor farming communities and big business with every spoonful. Sam Campbell reports from Phnom Penh

lundi 11 -

As Brazil’s economy grows faster, so does the gap between demand and supply of skilled labor.

lundi 11 -

Nyagatare — 27 children have been rescued from various forms of child labour in Mimuri Sector, Nyagatare District.

lundi 11 -

lundi 11 -

Suman cerca de mil productores defraudados de cuatro grupos demandantes y exigen la devolución de descuentos.

jeudi 7 -

Tribal groups around the world are losing their lands, and ways of life, to industries and governments

vendredi 1er -

mercredi 30 -

At least 2,000 sugarcane farmers have petitioned Kenya Sugar Board to declare Soin sugar-belt an electoral zone. The zone is currently under Muhuroni.

lundi 28 -

GUARIBA, Brazil, Mar 28, 2011 (IPS) - "She’s crazy" said most of the husbands and other family members of the 34 women who decided to become operators of sugarcane harvesters in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo, attracted by the opportunity of better pay and encouraged by the growing mechanisation of the industry.

jeudi 24 -

Sugarcane farmers in Chiredzi are up in arms with sugar processor Tongaat Hulett, which they accuse of undermining their viability.

vendredi 4 -

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 3, 2011 (IPS) - Thousands of women farmers in Brazil demonstrated this week against the use of toxic weedkillers and pesticides on crops and in favour of agricultural techniques that protect their families’ health.

dimanche 27 -

ISABELA, Philippines - The Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) joins the Isabela farming communities in opposing massive land grabbing in San Mariano, Isabela.

vendredi 25 -

Approximately 561 former sugar workers in Trelawny were presented with grant funding certificates, under the Government of Jamaica/European Union (EU) displaced sugar workers Economic Mitigation Programme on Wednesday February 23

mardi 22 -

lundi 14 -

Over 13,000 sugarcane cutters in Mumias Sugar zone will start receiving their pay electronically following a deal between Mumias Sugar Company, Family Bank and mobile phone money transfer service providers

samedi 12 -

lundi 31 -

Nairobi — Families moved from a titanium mining area in Kwale District are grappling with infrastructure problems as they settle on their new farms.

lundi 31 -

If it does, there are plenty of potential problems — for both investors and for the countries they’re moving into.

mardi 4 -

 National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Monday said its attention had been drawn to the clash on Sunday between police and sugarcane farmers.

vendredi 31 -

mardi 28 -

Some 200 sugar farm workers’ dependents have availed of free skills training from the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters (NFSP) through its Sugar Workers Foundation Livelihood and Technical Skills Training Center recently.

mardi 21 -

As many as 6,000 people from sugar industry, labors in sugar factories and sugarcane farmers in East Java held protest on the streets of Surabaya. The act is aimed at pointing out policies issued by the Ministry of Trade on refined sugar supplies.

lundi 20 -

The employees of Finchaa, Methara, and Wenji sugar factories who have been complaining about salary increment and other infrastructure have received a salary increase after two years..

lundi 20 -

Following last week’s threat by the Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guysuco) to de-recognize the main union representing sugar workers, the Alliance For Change (AFC) is calling for a special, emergency session of Parliament to discuss the fate of sugar, sugar workers and the sugar industry.

vendredi 17 -

Over 300 workers from the Hindustan Insecticides Limited plant manufacturing Endosulfan near Kochi at Kerala organised a rally today to oppose the unscientific approach adopted by environmental NGOs to seek ban on Endosulfan

mercredi 15 -

To tackle labour shortage, Maharashtra sugar mills have decided to take up mechanised farming and invested Rs 10 crore to buy 28 cane harvesting machines.

mardi 7 -

It’s a compelling public health mystery : Thousands of people in Northwestern Nicaragua are dying from chronic kidney failure, and no one knows why.

vendredi 3 -

The head of a labor union at a sugarcane factory in southern Iran has been jailed for six months for spreading rumors, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

jeudi 2 -

The chairman of a sugar refinery arrested on Tuesday as part of corruption investigations has been living a life of luxury and had been linked to suspects in the Ergenekon case — a clandestine organization accused of plotting to overthrow the government — according to reports from auditors at two ministries. His detention and potential arrest signals that this opulent lifestyle may soon come to an end.

samedi 27 -

The anti-Government Coalition has been loud and clear in its assessment that the Tourism Sector has declined significantly and that its contribution to the national economy has decreased seriously.

mercredi 24 -

After threatening that its crippling strike action could drag out until next year, GAWU said workers have agreed to resume duties on Friday, but NAACIE workers continued to hold out today for satisfactory wage offers from the sugar corporation.

mardi 23 -

Praja Telangana Rhythu Sangham (PTRS) on Tuesday warned the government that if it failed to release Rs. 10 crore for the Nizamabad Cooperative Sugar Factory and make it reopen, the PTRS would lay siege on the Shakkar Bhavan on November 29th.

lundi 22 -

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranians this month that "frugal" families have nothing to fear from impending economic pressures

samedi 20 -

Three members of the Haft-Tappeh sugarcane factory union in southern Iran have been sentenced to six months in jail, RFE/RL’S Radio Farda reports.

vendredi 19 -

jeudi 11 -

SAO PAULO, Nov. 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Solidaridad Network, one of the most prominent global non-government organizations supporting the development of sustainable production chains, headquartered in The Netherlands, is the newest partner of the RenovAcao Project.

mercredi 10 -

mardi 9 -

The prolonged delay in the start of sugarcane crushing by mills in Uttar Pradesh may spur distress sale by farmers.

Since, the farmers need their fields vacant for the coming rabi season mainly for sowing wheat, the cane may be diverted towards the kolhu, khandsari and crusher units, since they pay almost matching prices in cash.

jeudi 4 -

octobre 2010

vendredi 29 -

MBABANE-The production of ethanol in the country, as an alternative to petrol, has been delayed by squatters who do not want to vacate the land intended for the project.

jeudi 28 -

Mounting concern over security of food supplies is spurring a wave of private-sector investment in Africa that many hope will put it at the center of a green revolution.

dimanche 24 -

lundi 18 -

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Sugar workers today began an indefinite strike over demands for a 15 per cent salary increase for 2010.

samedi 16 -

The land owned by his community is currently threatened by the powerful businessman and CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat. Through his company the senator hopes to appropriate the land belonging to the 11 villages in Amleang commune in order to expand his sugarcane plantation.

vendredi 15 -

After a wait of eight years, wages of about 1.5 lakh sugar factory workers in the state will rise by 18 per cent with effectfrom April 2009 and wages of sugarcane harvesting labourers will rise by 23 per cent for 2010-11, State Co-operatives Minister Harshavardhan Patil told a news conference on Thursday.

jeudi 14 -

Muzaffarnagar, Oct 14 (PTI) The Bharatiya Kisan Union has threatened to launch an agitation for sugarcane growers if the current sugarcane prices are not revised by the state government. Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) president Mahender Singh Tikait has alleged that the state government, under pressure from sugar mill owners, is not announcing sugarcane prices.

mardi 12 -

Mumbai, Oct 12 (PTI) A prominent union, among those representing the around nine lakh sugarcane cutters in Maharashtra, has said they will strike work if the sugarcane cutting rate is not hiked to Rs 200 per tonne.

dimanche 10 -

Private farmers have accused Nzoia Sugar Company of frustrating their efforts to sell their cane to a private miller.

jeudi 7 -

Sugar cane farmers who are facing the worst drought in 15 years may not have sufficient reserves to fund the replanting of cane, a concern that has prompted the SA Canegrowers Association to approach the Land Bank for help.

mercredi 6 -

Some 30 workers of the Wales estate of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) are on strike over time stipulations inserted in their job description without an agreement.

mercredi 6 -

SUGARCANE farming is not yielding the desired results and is causing famine around Siphofaneni.
This is the view of Member of Parliament Gundwane Gamedze, who was speaking at the Inkhundla last Thursday during a visit by civil servants, who want to form a foundation that will help the needy under the constituency.

mardi 5 -

Public servants said poor service delivery in the education sector in the Busoga region is caused by the high rate of child labour in the area. The workers said child labour had contributed to high dropout rates in the region.

mercredi 29 -

A senior official of the Skeldon Sugar Factory has resigned amidst allegations of misappropriation of property belonging to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo)

mardi 28 -

Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s ethanol joint venture with Brazil’s Cosan poses a threat to Guarani Indian communities, indigenous rights organization Survival International said Tuesday.

vendredi 24 -

It’s not their poverty that drives Dr. Julian Choe to want to help the sugar cane plantation workers in the Dominican Republic. It’s the hopelessness of living with poverty and oppression.

mercredi 15 -

 Polícia Civil está investigando a morte de três pessoas ocorridas em usinas de produção de cana de açúcar no interior de São Paulo nos últimos dias

mercredi 15 -

 Western Kenya provincial administration has stepped in to contain the sugarcane poaching menace that has seen millers point accusing fingers at rivals

mardi 14 -

 The National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers of Uganda has signed a deal with the Sugar Corporation of Uganda (SCOUL) to resolve employee disputes.

dimanche 12 -

SAO PAULO — Authorities in Brazil say they have rescued nearly 100 workers who were allegedly living in slave-like conditions in sugarcane fields in the country’s southeast.

dimanche 12 -

The Brazilian authorities say they have rescued 95 farm workers who were being kept in slave-like conditions in two south-eastern states, the official Agencia Brasil reports.

mardi 7 -

The Fiji Trade Union Congress is calling on the Fiji Sugar Corporation to enter into negotiations over a proposed pay cut for workers in the industry.

lundi 6 -

Two prominent, popular brothers who operate the second-largest vegetable farm in Hawaii will be sentenced in federal court this week on human trafficking charges — they pleaded guilty — but two former state governors, community groups, fellow farmers and other supporters are trying to keep them out of prison.

samedi 4 -

The Iranian regime has given a year-long prison term for two Iranian workers at the Sugar Cane Factory of Haft Tapeh on charges of “insulting” the mullahs’ Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

samedi 4 -

Kampala — Over 500 workers of the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited (SCOUL) in Lugazi, Buikwe District, on Friday went on a strike, demanding for proper working conditions and a wage increment.

dimanche 29 -

The two Indian companies that were to construct the Tendaho Sugar Factory are being threatened by the government with losing the job if they do not start the work that is already two years overdue.

mercredi 25 -

As large-scale investors’ interest in acquiring vast swathes of land for commercial agriculture in Africa intensifies, farmers believe the time is ripe for the government to press investors to allocate shares to villagers as a corporate social responsibility.

Should the proposal be put in place villagers will become shareholders of large-scale commercial farms.

dimanche 22 -

Nairobi — A judge has dashed the hopes of West Kenya Sugar Company employees to have their working hours reduced to 44 a week.

mercredi 18 -

Workers at the Skeldon Sugar Factory went on strike yesterday over the dismissal of their colleagues following investigation into a fire at the factory which resulted in extensive damage and for which the cost of remedial work will run into millions.

mercredi 18 -

Cambodia’s sugar industry is undergoing a revival, but there is a bitter undercurrent to what would otherwise be a great success story.

mercredi 28 -

MECHANISATION of the sugar industry under the Chinese, which recently acquired the bulk of Governmentowned sugar factories up for divestment, will likely phase out the need for sugar cane-cutters.

mercredi 28 -

MECHANISATION of the sugar industry under the Chinese, which recently acquired the bulk of Governmentowned sugar factories up for divestment, will likely phase out the need for sugar cane-cutters

lundi 26 -

When Haitians cross into the Dominican Republic to work, they often lack official documents that can help protect them from abuse. That’s where Johnny Rivas steps in.

dimanche 25 -

Last week Friends of the Earth Europe and Mozambican NGO Justiça Ambiental [Environmental Justice, pt] furiously denounced an accord between Brazil, the European Union and Mozambique to promote biofuels production in Mozambique.

samedi 17 -

Brussels, July 14 – Friends of the Earth has strongly criticised an agreement expected to be announced today by EU and Brazilian leaders to expand biofuels in Mozambique. The agreement to promote biofuels in Africa to power European cars is described as “immoral and perverse” by the green group.

samedi 17 -

My friend Regine, who works with me on our non-profit to give voice to voiceless Haitian people, is about to head off to Batey 8, which is in Barahona, Dominican Republic. I will ask her a few questions before she heads off.

lundi 12 -

Former workers of the Sugar Manufacturing Company Limited (SMCL) want Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Labour and Small and Micro Enterprises Minister Errol McLeod to help them get themoney owed to them, after the company was closed down by the People’s National Movement (PNM) administration in April.

vendredi 9 -

Maputo — Cane cutters at the Maragra sugar plantation in Maputo province agreed on Wednesday to resume work, suspending a strike that began on Monday to protest against the deduction of three per cent of their wages as contributions to the Mozambican Social Security system, reports Thursday’s issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".

vendredi 9 -

Negros Occidental, Philippines — Another labor leader, Benjamin Bayker, 44, was murdered last June 14, 2010 by alleged members of 61st Infantry Batallion Philippines Army

jeudi 8 -

Maputo — More than 600 seasonal cane cutters, working for the Maragra sugar company, in Manhica district, about 80 kilometres north of Maputo, have been on strike since Monday, to protest against social security deductions from their wages, reports Wednesday’s issue of the daily paper "’Noticias".

mardi 6 -

Optimism about Fiji’s sugar industry is growing despite the Fiji Sugar Corporation announcing massive job cuts.

jeudi 1er -

THE Fiji Sugar Corporation has embarked on a major cost-cutting exercise which will result in at least 1000 workers being laid off over the next 18 months.

mercredi 30 -

SABMiller, one of the world’s leading brewers, is providing an education for children of sugar cane workers in Honduras.Cerveceria Hondurena, SABMiller’s Honduran subsidiary, set up the ‘Azunosa’ school with the aim of trying to ensure that the sugarcane fields which supply its soft drinks operation are not worked in by under 18 year olds.

mercredi 30 -

More than 4,000 sugar workers and small cane farmers in Jamaica who lost their jobs following the divestment of sugar factories are to begin receiving financial assistance tomorrow in the form of grants.

jeudi 24 -

NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, Philippines - The peasant federation Task Force Mapalad has slammed the family of President Gloria Arroyo for its last-minute move to convert the family-owned Hacienda Bacan from agricultural to industrial use in Negros Occidental province.

jeudi 24 -

A FARMER was arrested and briefly detained by military police in Kampong Speu province on Wednesday after trying in vain to stop employees of the Phnom Penh Sugar Company from clearing his land, marking the third arrest in a controversial land fight

mercredi 23 -

The chief executive officer of a sugar mill in Tando Allahyar accused of releasing toxic materials into the environment and violating the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) was indicted on Tuesday by the Sindh environmental protection tribunal.

mercredi 23 -

MUMBAI : FOR the first time in the five-decadeold co-operative movement history in Maharashtra, the sugar mills have failed to pay sugarcane growers their dues.

dimanche 20 -

As South African Indians commemorate 150 years of the landing of the first ship from India with indentured labour, Dipti Nair tracks down people who are eager to retrace their origin to the mother country.

jeudi 10 -

Nairobi — Former Kenya Sugar Board chairman Julius Nyarotso on Thursday took over as the chairman of Nzoia Sugar Company, amid disquiet by farmers over his appointment to the position.

jeudi 10 -

WORKERS at seven north Queensland sugar mills have walked off the job as they push sugar giant CSR for a better deal

lundi 31 -

Harare — GOVERNMENT has begun an assessment programme to determine compensation due to villagers who will be affected by the Middle Sabi and Chisumbanje Ethanol project.

The ethanol project is a joint project between the Government, through the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority and Macdom and Rating Investments and will cover at least 40 000 hectares.

vendredi 28 -

Nairobi — Operations at Nzoia Sugar Company could be paralysed following threats by 45,000 cane growers to stop deliveries to the firm.

lundi 24 -

PUNE : As Maharashtra prepares for a normal kharif after two years of lower agriculture output, a shortage of labourers has put farmers at a disadvantage

dimanche 23 -

CANE-CUTTING Labour unions see red, factories say move aimed at offsetting worker shortage

mercredi 19 -

WASHINGTON — The farm herbicide atrazine, used widely worldwide, has been shown to affect reproduction in fish, according to a US government study released Wednesday.

mercredi 19 -

Farmers in Fiji are desperate to hear what their fourth payment for last years crop will be.

A petition has already been submitted calling for compensation for growers from the Fiji Sugar Corporation after profits were cut by problems at the crushing mills.

The upgrades to the mills were due to be completed by the 2009 season, but the work was not completed on time.

vendredi 14 -

Nairobi — The Capital Markets Authority will investigate the allegations of malpractice in the country’s largest sugar miller, Mumias Sugar Company, a House committee has heard.

jeudi 13 -

Appeal in solidarity with the sugar cane cutters of the María Luisa sugar refinery in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, who had been struggling for a month in order to have their rights raised to the same level as other workers in the sector. They are facing a lot of repression in the most adverse situation to demand social rights as is Colombia nowadays.

vendredi 30 -

MUMBAI : Maharashtra government’s gift for workers on International Labour Day and the golden jubilee of the state is a unique scheme which seeks to end shortchanging of labourers by middlemen.

mercredi 28 -

Ministério Público Federal deve acusar a Funai pelo não cumprimento de acordo que prevê a identificação de territórios indígenas no MS. BNDES também será questionado por financiar usinas de cana-de-açúcar que incidem sobre terras

mercredi 28 -

A audiência pública tem como objetivo a análise do licenciamento ambiental referente à usina de processamento de cana-de-açúcar situada no município de Rio Brilhante - MS.

mercredi 28 -

Os cursos estão na área de alimentos e bebidas, automotiva, construção civil, couro e calçados, eletroeletrônica, metalmecânica, segurança do trabalho, telecomunicações e têxtil e vestuário

mardi 27 -

Maputo — Mozambican Labour Minister Helena Taipo has cancelled the work permit of a Zimbabwean citizen, Stewart Goss, who is accused of ill-treating Mozambican workers and of racist attitudes.

mardi 27 -

Ruralistas de Bauru, no interior de São Paulo, estão se organizando para resistir ao cerco do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST) às fazendas da região. As terras do centro-oeste do Estado são o mais novo alvo das ações do movimento no Estado. Desde o ano passado, 12 propriedades rurais foram invadidas por integrantes do MST.

lundi 26 -

SANTA CRUZ, BOLIVIA - An angry mob of protesters set fire to a sugar refinery sunday night.

About 800 street vendors marched to the San Aurelio sugar refinery claiming the refinery had kicked them off their land.

samedi 24 -

WASHINGTON - Federal scientists will reopen a study Monday of the health effects of a weed-killer vital to sugar-cane farming, one of Florida’s most important crops

jeudi 22 -

Kampala — Factories which do not comply with the standards set by the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) on waste management will be closed.

lundi 19 -

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Uncertainty over South Africa’s land reform programme meant to hand over 30 percent of farm land to the country’s black majority by 2014 has slowed investment in its sugar sector, an industry official said.

jeudi 15 -

dimanche 11 -

Bhubaneswar : Nirman, an environmental action group will launch a book Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) : Improving Sugarcane Cultivation in India in Odia language on April 13.

vendredi 9 -

A SECTION of Kakira sugar cane outgrowers have stopped supplying Kakira Sugar Works factory. This was after Kamigo residents in Kakira threatened to burn or vandalise any lorry ferrying sugar cane to the factory. The firm belongs to the Madhvani Group of Companies.

lundi 5 -

jeudi 1er -

MONUC peacekeepers from the Bangladesh Airforce (BANAIR) contingent continued their support for the Baraka Academy in Bunia this week by donating a manual roller machine to extract juice from sugarcane. The juice will be converted to molasses for use as a sweetener in drinks, cakes, pastries, and other confections for sale in local marketplaces.

mardi 30 -

The construction of a US$600 million ethanol plant in Chisumbanje, Manicaland province has ignited a storm of protests and claims that it could result in thousands of families being evicted from the area.

mardi 30 -

Jinja — Kakira Sugar Works is seeking to displace about 3,000 families from a 500-acre piece of land to expand its sugarcane plantation.

The company, which is part of the Madhvani Group business empire, is seeking a court order to compel Jinja District authorities to relocate over 20,000 people from the land in Kamigo village, Buyengo Sub-county.

samedi 27 -

Lubombo farmers affiliated to the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE) have accused the company of reneging in its promises thus forcing them out of business.

samedi 27 -

Disputes are hampering progress of downstream development for mostly sugarcane farming, His Majesty King Mswati III was told on Friday. Hhohho Regional Administrator Ben Mshamndane Nsibandze acknowledged the development and changing of people’s lives for the better by the Maguga Dam initiative, but said all such efforts would no sooner amount to naught if the disputes were left unattended to.

vendredi 19 -

Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya (March 19) — The sugarcane plantations recently inspected by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Piat town in Cagayan province is expected to boost the operations of state colleges and universities in Cagayan Valley region.

mardi 16 -

The situation of the Guarani tribe of southern Brazil is one of the worst of all indigenous peoples in the Americas, says a new report by Survival to the UN.

dimanche 14 -

Farmers equate saying goodbye to atrazine to depleting Floridian agriculture. But a growing number of scientists believe atrazine, an herbicide widely used to remove weeds and promote the growth of cash-crop sugar cane, may cause cancer and birth defects in animals and humans.

jeudi 11 -

The sugar cane industry defines socio-economic conditions in Aracoiaba. It hasn’t always made life sweet for local workers, but things are looking up.

jeudi 11 -

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has disbursed grants totaling some $51 million, to approximately 300 ex-sugar workers who have been displaced by the restructuring of the local industry.

mercredi 3 -

Some hail ethanol as the methadone needed to wean Western countries off fossil fuels. Others deplore it as environmental sabotage. Prof. Luiz Martinelli, ecology, University of São Paulo in Brazil, presented his assessment of the controversial process on Friday.

mercredi 3 -

Mechanisation, innovation and land limitation drive efficiency in ethanol from sugar cane.

The sun is weighing down upon the high plateaus of Goiás where the long, dry season has set in, and the sugar cane harvest – which stretches from April to November – is in full swing. But there isn’t a traditional cane cutter or a burning field in sight. Instead, large machines loom over the fields, sucking up the tall thick grass and spitting out pure cane.

mercredi 3 -

A lot has been said to Sierra Leoneans about the Addax Bioenergy sugarcane/cassava for ethanol project, which Oluniyi Robbin-Coker, the Special Private Sector Advisor to His Excellency the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, refers to as “Sierra Leone’s flagship agricultural investment”.

mardi 2 -

Brazil is hailed as a biofuels success story - producing and using ethanol from high yielding crops within the country. But those indigenous families who have been displaced by sugar cane cultivation see things differently

mercredi 24 -

Maputo — Mozambican labour inspectors have ordered the suspension of the contracts of 87 foreigners found to be working illegally at the Maragra sugar plantation, in Manhica district, about 80 kilometres north of Maputo

vendredi 19 -

CHANDIGARH : About 1,000 employees of sugar mills in Punjab have threatened to commit relay suicides across the state if government fails to pay up their salaries withheld for 23 months.
High drama was witnessed at the office of Punjab Agro Foodgrains Corporation where hassled employees met senior Akali leader Prem Singh Chandumajra and declared their intentions.

mercredi 17 -

AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on Tuesday urged Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to increase the Fair and Remunerative Price of sugarcane substantially.

mercredi 17 -

THE expansion of Nakambala Sugar Estates by Zambia Sugar Plc has continued to be a source of pride to the local people as well as a source of employment and economic stimulation in Zambia.

mardi 9 -

Houses numbering 3,400 built for Tendaho Sugar Factory workers are to be inaugurated and handed over to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) on Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The houses were built in the Afar Regional State in a 70km range from Dubti to Asaita by the Tendaho Houses Project under the Ministry of Works and Urban Development (MoWUD).

samedi 6 -

More than two months after the sugarcane crushing season began on the face of violent protests, it is virtually a win-win situation for both farmers and sugar mills in Uttarakhand.

vendredi 5 -

Farmers supplying sugarcane to government-owned millers could miss out on the high sugar prices in the international market, due to production inefficiencies.

jeudi 4 -

jeudi 28 -

The United States has asked for information on child labour in Thailand to use in its annual report on human trafficking for 2010, a senior official said yesterday.

lundi 25 -

WAGE negotiations between the Sugar Producers’ Federation of Jamaica (SPF) and trade unions representing workers failed to reach an agreement today at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, North Street Office.

mercredi 20 -

Bangalore : Sugarcane growers from across the State congregated in Bangalore on Tuesday and took out a protest rally seeking a fair and remunerative price for their produce.

mercredi 20 -

HOLDEN — Area residents familiar with the efforts to build a hospital in La Romana, Dominican Republic, are scrambling to help support teams from that hospital being sent into Haiti to relieve some of the suffering there wrought by the Jan. 12 earthquake. Many of the sugarcane field workers served by La Romana’s hospital are Haitian migrants.

mercredi 13 -

SAO PAULO, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Brazil’s attorney general’s office said on Tuesday it will seek to annul an injunction that allowed sugar and ethanol producer Cosan (CSAN3.SA) (CZZ.N) to be removed from a government labor black list.

vendredi 8 -

Brazil’s unit of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT.N) said on Friday it has temporarily suspended a commercial contract with Cosan (CSAN3.SA) after the sugar company was included on a government’s labor black list.

vendredi 8 -

BNDES, Brazil’s state development bank, suspended all new loans to the world’s largest sugar-cane processor after it was added to a Labor Ministry list of companies whose workers operate in slave-like conditions

jeudi 7 -

The Fiji Sugar Corporation will lay off some of its mill workforce once the mill upgrade works at all its sugar mills around the country are completed.

jeudi 7 -

Brazil’s state development bank BNDES said on Thursday it suspended loans to sugar and ethanol group Cosan after it was included on a government’s list of companies with workers in slave-like conditions.

jeudi 7 -

Cosan SA Industria & Comercio, the world’s biggest sugarcane processor, fell the most in eight months on concern that its inclusion on a list of companies whose workers operate in slave-like conditions will drive away clients and cut off access to funding.

samedi 2 -

Santo Domingo.– A total of 96 illegal Dominican boatpeople who set out on November 13, 2008, for Puerto Rico, are being forced to work in sugarcane plantations in Cuba, family members said.

vendredi 1er -

Chandigarh : Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has announced several incentives for workers of co-operative sugar mills saying that the sugar mill which will show good performance would pay its workers bonus equivalent to 45 days of their salary. He also urged the workers of sugar mills to work hard and make the sugar mills self-dependent.

lundi 28 -

Tension prevailed at Nandyal Sugar Factory on Monday following farmers’ agitation for enhancement of the cane price. A large number of farmers led by MLA Katasani Rambhupal Reddy and MP S.P.Y. Reddy gathered at the factory demanding a higher price.

mercredi 23 -

The issue of job creation has become a heavy burden on the government and on those with the potential to undertake capital investment in an economy such as ours that is struggling to rebuild after more than a decade of civil strife.

mardi 22 -

The Tana River Delta on Kenya’s north coast is under unprecedented threat as corporations and foreign agencies scramble to exploit its riches for export crops, biofuels and minerals. NatureKenya (BirdLife Partner) & partners are working with local communities to try and stop the proposed poorly planned developments which would result in tens of thousands of people losing their livelihoods

lundi 21 -

Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj is claiming that nine out of every ten families in areas known as the sugar belt are facing hardships. He said this was revealed in a recent survey. Maharaj made the comment while speaking to reporters at Macaulay Hindu temple in Claxton Bay, yesterday, after distributing toys to children.

mardi 15 -

Sugarcane used to be king in the islands. Immigrants from around the world came to Hawaii in search of a better life. They labored in the fields and factories and also raised families in camps providing the foundation for a multi-ethnic society.

samedi 5 -

NAIROBI, Dec 5 (IPS) - Mauritian experts are helping set up cogeneration systems to feed the hunger for electricity in Tanzania, Zambia and elsewhere. An example of how appropriate technology can be applied to problems common to countries in the global South.

vendredi 4 -

Enacting one law after the other will not eradicate bonded labour if there is no political will for it, National Human Rights Commission member Justice B.C. Patel said.

Pointing out that there are no vigilance committees to check bonded labour in many places, Patel said the district administration is lax when it comes to addressing the issue.

jeudi 3 -

the union representing workers in the sugar production business, placed full-page ads in the Wednesday editions of a number of national newspapers to present their case in their rejection of the privatization of the state’s sugar refineries.

samedi 21 -

LUCKNOW : Distressed at not getting an adequate price for his produce, a debt-ridden sugarcane farmer allegedly committed suicide. The victim burnt his fields in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district and then jumped in the fire, police said on Saturday.

jeudi 19 -

Faced with a protest by farmers and almost all opposition parties over sugarcane pricing, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday held an emergency meeting on the issue with senior cabinet colleagues.

jeudi 19 -

“Labourers working under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, who earn Rs. 100 a day, make more money than landowners like me,” said Chaudhary Krishipal Singh .

novembro de 2009

sexta-feira 13 -

So long confined to western Uttar Pradesh, the agitation by sugarcane farmers seeking higher prices for their yield entered the eastern and central Uttar Pradesh on Friday.

sexta-feira 13 -

More than 1000 cane cutters at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Company have ended their three day strike after the management agreed to meet the workers’ demands.

sexta-feira 6 -

More than 10,000 sugarcane workers in the South American country of Guyana have ended a weeklong protest after the government ordered an arbiter to review demands for higher pay.

quarta-feira 21 -

Harare — Government has finally endorsed the relocation of 1 000 families from Nuanetsi Ranch in Mwenezi to pave way for a multi-million dollar bio-energy project bankrolled by the Zimbabwe Bio Energy.

quarta-feira 21 -

President Hugo Chavez’s government plans to seize control of shuttered sugar mills

sexta-feira 16 -

The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union’s (GAWU) two-day protest over what it called GuySuCo’s high-handed approach in ongoing wage negotiations has ended and workers are to return to the estates today.

sexta-feira 16 -

Yola — Tension is mounting in Numan, Adamawa State as no fewer than 18 persons have been arrested by the state Police Command for disturbances, following a protest embarked upon by the Gywana Community against Savannah Sugar Company.

sexta-feira 16 -

Nairobi — Members of the parliamentary departmental committee on agriculture, livestock and cooperatives have urged Kwale International Sugar Company (Kisco) to comply with government’s requirements if they wish to continue with their business.

quinta-feira 15 -

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - Thousands of sugarcane workers were on strike Thursday in Guyana in a dispute over pay, paralyzing production of the impoverished South American nation’s No. 1 export.

segunda-feira 12 -

Sugarcane farming has failed to reduce poverty in Western Province, Ministers Wycliffe Oparanya and Paul Otuoma have said.

Mr Oparanya of Planning and Dr Otuoma of Fisheries said it was regrettable farmers only take home less than 30 per cent of the returns after investing in the sector.

octobre 2009

dimanche 11 -

To see children’s silhouettes at sunrise, bent as they chop canes with machetes, is to see the scale of poverty in Bolivia, where often every member of the family, no matter how young, has to work.

segunda-feira 5 -

As Fiji braces for the full impact of a cumulative 36 percent reduction in preferential prices paid by the European Union for sugar, the 20 percent devaluation of the Fiji dollar is going to cushion the fall.

segunda-feira 28 -

Nairobi — Sugar imports from Tanzania should attract 100 per cent duty because the country is not a member of the Comesa bloc.

quinta-feira 24 -

A total of 70,000 former internally displaced persons who occupied Kinyara sugar factory land in Masindi District, have been asked to leave, Daily Monitor has learnt.

domingo 20 -

Sugarcane farmers yesterday urged the chairman of the Chon Buri Agricultural Business Association to ask for payment of Bt13.8 million allegedly over-due from Chon Buri Sugar Industry Co Ltd, or they would rally soon outside Government House.

sexta-feira 18 -

The Brazilian government has unveiled plans to ban sugar cane plantations in environmentally sensitive areas.

sexta-feira 18 -

Maputo — Seasonal workers on the Marromeu sugar plantation on the south bank of the Zambezi river on Thursday ended a brief strike after the personal intervention of Mozambican Labour Minister Helena Taipo.

quinta-feira 17 -

Maputo — Seasonal sugar plantation workers, employed by the Sena Company, in the central Mozambican district of Marromeu, went on strike on Wednesday, in protest against a new wage scale that only adds around 100 meticais (about 3.8 US dollars) to their monthly pay packet.

quinta-feira 17 -

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — More than 200 seasonal workers from the Marromeu sugar plant in the central Sofala province of Mozambique have been on strike since Wednesday over a wage dispute, the daily independent O Pais said in a report today.

terça-feira 15 -

Three of the leaders of the Haft Tapeh sugarworkers’ union in Iran sentenced to prison earlier this year have had their sentences overturned on appeal.

However, Union president Ali Nejati and communications officer Reza Rekhshan still face prison sentences while their appeal process drags on - and their imprisonment would be a severe blow to the sugarworkers’ struggle for an independent union. The charges against Rekhshan include providing information to foreign trade unionists on the horrendous working conditions at Haft Tapeh.

terça-feira 15 -

BULAWAYO - A critical shortage of coal and raw sugar has forced Bulawayo-based sugar manufacturing company Gold Star to temporarily suspend production.

terça-feira 15 -

Global Organics, Ltd., one of the nation’s leading suppliers of organic ingredients, today introduced "EcoSocial" certified organic cane sugar to North America. EcoSocial promotes "ethical trade" by integrating economic, social and environmental criteria in a "3-in-1" certification.

agosto de 2009

sexta-feira 21 -

FIJI’S Interim Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, has abolished the country’s Sugarcane Growers Council. It’s the latest move by the country’s military backed leader to sideline political forces that appear to be opposed to the ideals of his military backed regime. It comes just a week after he limited the ability of the country’s Methodist Church to raise funds, saying it is to involved in national politics.

quarta-feira 19 -

BUNDABERG cane growers will be the meat in the sandwich tomorrow when Bundaberg Sugar workers commence 24 hour strike action.

Workers at the Millaquin and Bingera mills, along with other Bundaberg Sugar enterprises, will strike from 7am through to 7am Friday morning. Workers will also cease working overtime for seven days.

quarta-feira 12 -
a matéria...

sábado 1º -
Wikipedia
a matéria...

juillet 2009

vendredi 31 -

Labour Commissioner told to fix minimum wages, frame rules and submit a report within a month

The provisions of the order are limited to employees of Aland sugar factory

However, workers in other factories can cite the SHRC order to claim minimum wages

mercredi 29 -

MORE than 500 sugar cane farmers have switched to alternate farming practices under the Agriculture Ministry’s food security program.

mardi 28 -

BANGKOK, July 28 (TNA) – Sugarcane grower representatives gathered at Government House on Tuesday, demanding the Abhisit administration pay them more quickly the promised return for their produce.
 

jeudi 23 - Brazilian seminar Ethical Sugar - July 23rd and 24th - Sao Paulo - "Social rights, environmental rights and Sustainable management in the Brazilian Sugar-Alcohol industry"
l'article...
Brazilian seminar Ethical Sugar "Social rights, environmental rights and Sustainable management in the Brazilian Sugar-Alcohol industry"

jeudi 23 -

Sugar cane farmers in Nyanza Province are demanding a 51 per cent stake in the state owned sugar companies, which are due for privatisation.

mercredi 22 -

Fair Work Australia has ordered a ballot of Bundaberg Sugar workers on their plans to take industrial action to protect leave entitlements.

mardi 21 -

The Board of Directors of the National Committee for Sustainable Sugarcane Development, comprising the National Union of Sugar Cane Growers (CNPR-CNOP), the National Union of Sugarcane Producers of the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), the National Chamber of Sugar and Alcohol Industries, the Secretaries of the Economy, Finance and Public Credit, the Environment, National Resources and Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food, informed that the 2008/2009 harvest production totals 4.9 million tons, which covers the needs of the national market.

lundi 20 -

At the opening of the twenty-first century the outlook for the Dominican sugar industry is uncertain and tenuous, while the bateys languish in the dustbin of history. Once part of a sugar kingdom that provided almost a third of the world’s sugar, the Dominican Republic is now ranked at 28 on the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s list of the most important producers of sugar in the world.

vendredi 17 -

Maputo — Workers at the sugar company Acucaraeira de Mocambique (AM) at Mafambisse, in the central Mozambican province of Sofala, have called on the government to throw the main shareholder, the South African company Tongaat Hulett, out of the company, reports the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique".

mercredi 15 -

About 8,000 bags of rice worth P15 million are now being released to city and town governments for food-for-work programs this month to aid sugar workers in Negros Occidental during the tiempo muerto (dead season) in the industry, Board Member Enrique Miguel Lacson said yesterday.

lundi 13 -

Nairobi — For two decades, Kisumu Town residents have waited for the day collapsed industries would be revived and jobs become available.

jeudi 9 -

In May of 2009, the European Commission Europeaid Cooperation Office commissioned an audit into the supply of Agriculture Fertilizer for the period of December 7, 2007 to June 6, 2008. Under the Accompanying Measures for Sugar, Belize received aid in the form of fertilizer with the Government of Belize (at the time a PUP government) signing a supply contract for fertilizer with Prosser Fertilizers and Agrotec Company on December 7, 2007.

julho de 2009

quarta-feira 8 -

The Obama administration’s trade policy has so far flown below the radar. This is hardly surprising. With the Doha Round dead, global trade declining, and war and other crises dominating the headlines, the previous administration’s still-pending trade agreements have received little attention.

jeudi 2 -

FROM 6am on Monday, representatives of the Australian Workers’ Union will be talking with employees and casuals at Bundaberg Sugar over a pay and conditions package being offered by management.

jeudi 2 -

A group of people purportedly linked to the Nicaraguan Association of Persons Affected by Chronic Kidney Failure (ANAIRC) have been developing for some time a defamatory campaign against Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited, based on unfounded allegations for the sole purpose of getting unjustified monetary compensations from the company. In the last few weeks they have also targeted Grupo Pellas in their campaign and have launched a boycott against the Flor de Caña rum brand.

mercredi 1er -

The Provincial Sugar Industry Task Force yesterday submitted to Gov. Isidro Zayco a master list of sugar workers in Negros Occidental, which will be used as the basis for prioritizing government assistance during the “dead season”.

jeudi 25 -

Local farmers should benefit from the surge in global sugar prices, which have reached a three-year high on lower production by major exporting countries. But industries including ethanol, farm feed and alcoholic beverages risk seeing higher costs of raw materials, according to Surat Phadachawasakul, general manager of Thailand Cane and Sugar Corporation (TCSC).

lundi 22 -

The Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association has taken steps to advance the reform process for the organization that is charged with the management of the affairs of thousands of Belize’s cane farmers.At a special general meeting on Sunday in Corozal, the farmers approved an amendment to the Standing Orders of the Association, giving them better control over the way meetings are conducted in the future. Carlos Magana is the Chief Executive Officer for the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association.

dimanche 21 -

Sugar producers in Negros Occidental have voiced their official opposition to the provincial ban on genetically-modified organisms.

mardi 16 -

Durban, South Africa, June 12 - Persistent delays in South Africa’s land reform programme pose a serious threat to investment in its sugar sector, an industry official said on Friday.

mardi 16 -

According to information provided by the Brazil’s Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE), the property in West Bahia belongs to Rotavi Industrial Ltda., a company that used vegetal charcoal as its fuel to make light alloy products.

samedi 13 -

SANDRA Dobson was sure the only career path for her was as a cosmetologist. that was until she discovered how successful she could be as a cane farmer.

mercredi 10 -

The Government will have to come up with more than $2.7 billion by next week to pay sugar workers whose positions were made redundant last year.

mercredi 10 -

Colombia’s government proudly claims that it is the biggest producer of biodiesel and ethanol in Latin America after Brazil, but human rights groups do not share that enthusiasm.

mercredi 10 -

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - A union leader says over 13,000 former sugar workers will benefit from a comprehensive severance payout this month as Jamaica continues to seek a buyer for its debt-swamped sugar company.

lundi 8 -

The launch of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) Customs in Zimbabwe marks the beginning of hard times for Kenya’s sugar farming and its six million dependants.

June 2009

Thursday 4 -

As climate change forces economies around the world to cap carbon emissions, investors are pouring cash into the development of biofuels, as a replacement for fossil fuels. Seif Madoffe writes that this has led to ’climate colonialism’ - ’a massive land-grabbing scramble in Africa’, as European companies - some with foreign aid money support - rapidly establish enormous carbon monoculture fields in tropical countries.

Tuesday 2 -

SAO PAULO - The Brazilian government and the sugar cane-based ethanol industry are hoping to head off complaints about harmful environmental and labor practices by investing in socially responsible production methods, speakers at the 2nd Ethanol Summit 2009 said on Monday.

Monday 1 -

A report recently issued by the watchdog group Catholic Land Pastoral shows that debt slavery in Brazil has reached record numbers. The report stated that in 2008, there were 280 reported cases of debt slavery, a six percent increase from 2007.

May 2009

Monday 25 -

KAMPALA, Uganda (Dow Jones)—Uganda’s president Tuesday accused opposition politicians and environmental activists of hampering sugar expansion projects and denying the country a chance to industrialize its economy.

vendredi 22 -

As the train heads to Mumbai from Marathwada, the air resonates with the ever-so-familiar poem from school, ‘Shikari aata hai, jaal failata hai. Daane ka lobh dikhata hai, lekin hamein jaal mein naïf fasna chahiye. The poem takes on a new meaning in Marathwada though : there are tales galore of the predator and prey here.

Tuesday 19 -

Special livelihood programs for sugar workers in Negros Occidental during the dead season, and for porters from the shutdown Bacolod airport will be implemented soon, Liduvino Geron, first vice president for programs management of the Land Bank of the Philippines, said yesterday.

Friday 8 -

Scientists at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) joined hands to develop SSI, or Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative, that will take the sugarcane industry to drip method for cultivating the water-intensive crop, reducing input costs and also get higher yield.

Thursday 7 -

THE ongoing battle between Bundaberg Sugar management and unions over workers leave has not progressed despite another meeting yesterday, with union representatives saying industrial action was “90% likely”.

Thursday 7 -

A RESOLUTION supporting the sugar workers and laborers’ plight on the feared ‘dead season’ was passed both by the District Tripartite Councils of the Victorias Milling Corporation (VMC) and the Lopez Sugar Mill District (LSMD) recently, said Alan Gozon of the Democratic Association and Labor Organization (Dalo).

April 2009

Thursday 30 -

SAN FERNANDO, Philippines — Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) is giving farm workers until Oct. 30 to stop planting and occupying portions of the 6,453-hectare Tarlac sugar estate rendered idle by a 2004 bloody labor dispute and an agrarian case pending in the Supreme Court.

Thursday 23 -

Bundaberg Sugar says it is confident it will be able to negotiate a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) with its 350 employees at Bingera Mill.

Thursday 23 -

THE threat of industrial action against Bundaberg Sugar is becoming increasingly likely, as Enterprise Bargaining Agreement negotiations between management and unions remain in stalemate.

Wednesday 22 -

Thatta, Apr 21, 2009 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) — Over two dozen workers, led by CBA leaders of Dewan Sugar Mills Workers Union, Tuesday staged demonstration outside press club Thatta for payment of salaries, withdrawal of forced leave orders of a number of employees and accepting other demands.

Wednesday 22 -

Maputo — The wage fund for workers in the sugar sector increased from about five million US dollars in 2000 to a little over 30 million dollars in 2008 as a result of the creation of more jobs and wage rises every year

Wednesday 15 -

Johannesburg — DISGRUNTLED land-reform beneficiaries have invaded a farm near Malelane in Mpumalanga, ousting its managers and assuming control of the farm workers and the running of the farm

Thursday 2 -

A staunch ZANU PF stalwart who instigated, and in most cases led, violent farm attacks against sugarcane farmers in the Lowveld for almost a decade, has been arrested and is set to face serious jail time.

March 2009

Saturday 28 -

SITEKI, 24 March 2009 (PlusNews) - Kwanele Dlamini's motorbike can carry him to most rural homesteads in the eastern Lubombo Region of Swaziland, but he has to get off and walk the final rocky stretch to Solomon Ndwandwe's property and then duck a barbed-wire fence.

Thursday 26 -

The provincial government of Negros Occidental has allotted P15-million in assistance to displaced sugar workers during the “dead season,” a local official said Thursday.

Wednesday 25 -

This paper provides a contemporary and critical assessment of the development being fostered in the Brazilian sugarcane industry

Tuesday 24 - Social Report Brazil 2009

The origin of sugar cane workers can be traced back through the history of slavery. At the transition of pre-industrial slavery to industrial slavery (1888) workers were likely to stay with their owner to continue to work.

Friday 20 -

The government of Iran is stepping up its pressure against the Haft Tapeh sugar workers' union with new arrests. While the 5 union leaders arrested in December and charged with "endangering national security" and "anti-government propaganda" still await sentencing from the trial which ended on February 17, Haft Tapeh Executive Board member Rahim Beshag was arrested by the secret police on February 22.

Friday 20 -

Leaders of an independent union at the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane Plantation and Industry Company were arrested by Iranian authorities in late February.

Friday 13 -

NCRI – 2,000 part-time workers were laid-off in Rolling and Pipes Mill Corporation (ARPCO) in the southwestern city of Ahwaz.

Tuesday 10 -

A Procuradoria do Trabalho no Município de Ribeirão Preto (SP) firmou mais uma importante parceria que contribuirá para a fiscalização das condições sanitárias nas moradias de cortadores de cana.

Monday 9 -

ZAMBIA Sugar Company employees in Mazabuka have been awarded a 14 per cent pay rise across the board with effect from April 1.

Sunday 8 -

TACLOBAN CITY—Close to 500 soldiers from Eastern Visayas region departed Friday for Negros Occidental province to augment military forces facing an upsurge of rebel attacks on sugar plantations and other private companies in the province.

Tuesday 3 -

Sugar has a calming effect on babies that lasts beyond 10 minutes, new Toronto research suggests.

Sunday 1 -

The cancelling of an agreement that would have seen several duty tariffs for Thailand’s sugar imports to Indonesia eliminated by 2010 does not go far enough to protect Indonesian farmers, the local industry association says.

February 2009

Friday 27 -

GUATEMALA CITY — A Russia diplomat says his country is considering offering Guatemala guns in exchange for its sugar and coffee.

Wednesday 25 -

The sugar industry has sought immediate measures from the government to ensure that the benefits of the subsidy regime reach the farmers and not cola and beverage companies.

Monday 23 -

Kampala — Sugarcane growers have demanded better prices. Through the Uganda National Association of Sugarcane Growers, the farmers alleged that they were paid an average of sh34,000 per tonne.

Monday 23 -

BACOLOD CITY – Suspected New People’s Army (NPA) rebels raided a sugar farm in Cadiz City, burning and destroying two farm tractors Sunday night, police said.

Sunday 22 -

An independent workers union in southern Iran is challenging a legal case against them by the Revolutionary Court and they need your support, now.

Thursday 19 -

PARIS (AFP) – A teaspoon of moistened sugar under the tongue could save the lives of thousands of children suffering from hypoglycemia caused by malaria, a researcher who conducted clinical trials said Thursday.

Tuesday 10 -

 social impact assessment ordered by the Planning Institute of Jamaica found the previous People's National Party government guilty of failing to properly inform or consult with sugar cane workers about the looming reforms that would change the face of the industry.

Monday 9 -

THE National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) is urging Negros Occidental Gov. Isidro Zayco and the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) to directly give the government's support from the Social Amelioration Fund (SAF) to sugar workers.

Monday 9 -

BADIN, Feb 9: A complete strike was observed here on Monday in protest against manhandling of union workers and refusal by management to allow union activities in the Army Welfare Sugar Mills.

Monday 9 -

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Failure to save the ailing sugar industry could result in a spike in crime, including an increase in marijuana production and prostitution, as displaced workers try to make ends meet, a study has revealed.

Sunday 8 -

BACOLOD CITY—The top communist guerrilla leader in Negros Occidental criticized as palliative the province’s program to help sugar farm workers cope with the so-called dead season when there’s no work for them.

January 2009

Thursday 29 -

Guyana is importing sugar for the first time in nearly two decades to cover a shortfall blamed on heavy rains and labor strikes.

Thursday 29 -

Sugar cane farmers are still on strike this evening. The latest information into 7NEWS is that after a day of meetings, the management of the Sugar Cane Farmers Association and the Sugar Industry Control Board have been unable to reach a resolution.

Tuesday 27 -

BACOLOD CITY – The Negros Occidental provincial government has sought a P30-million allocation from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to purchase National Food Authority rice for sugar workers during the “dead season” when there is no work in plantations and mills.

Monday 26 -

KARACHI, Jan 26: Sindh Minister for Environment and Alternative Energy Askari Taqvi has asked sugar mills to ensure adherence to the country’s environmental laws and national environmental quality standards at the earliest to avert penalties and other legal actions.

Thursday 15 -

Guyana is expelling managers of its sugar industry in hopes of boosting production.

Saturday 10 -

Masvingo — Workers at sugar cane plantations in the Lowveld last week downed tools demanding payment of their salaries in foreign currency.

Tuesday 6 -

MUMBAI, Jan 6 (Reuters) - India sugar futures rose on Tuesday morning on firm spot buying by traders as the truckers strike entered the second day, analysts said.

Monday 5 -

The Ethiopian sugar exporting sector is set to consolidate its share of the European sugar market following the revision of its quota to the market under a new initiative that encourages the increased importation of non-war materials from developing countries (LDCs).

Thursday 1 - Social Report 2009 - Brazil

This work is a balance sheet completed by Jean-Baptiste de Vevey for his Masters degree. It considers socio-economic development in the state of São Paulo in relation to the sugar cane based ethanol industry and how this fits within the framework of the international label of biofuels as suggested by the EPFL (Federal Polytechnical School of Lausanne, Switzerland).

December 2008

Friday 5 -

Kampala — THE land that the Madhvani Group applied for in Amuru district was a game reserve (public land) degazetted in 1975, the lands minister has said.

Wednesday 3 -

Johannesburg — BITTERNESS is rising in the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) over SA's perceived hardline approach to its poorer neighbours in the region.

Monday 1 -

The increasing food prices that have brought fear the world this year were caused by several problems in some agricultural commodities exporting countries. This is the evaluation of Abdolreza Abbassian, FAO's Secretary of Intergovernmental Group on Grains, during his lecture in the "Biofuels - the Energy for the 21st Century" Seminar, promoted by Infoglobo on Copacabana Palace Hotel.

November 2008

Thursday 20 -

Representatives of social movements are pressing for changes the in methods and models of agro-fuel production and demonstrating against the boost of regional monocultures, as they restrict the development of the local populations and promote conditions of food dependence

Tuesday 4 -

When Dario Franchitti steered his sleek, 670-horsepower, orange-and-black Indy car to victory at this year’s Indianapolis 500, the ebullient Scotsman chalked up an odd footnote in sports history. He became the first driver ever to win the iconic American auto race on pure ethanol—the gin-clear, high-octane corn hooch that supporters from midwestern farmers to high-ranking politicians hope will soon replace gasoline as America’s favorite motor fuel.

October 2008

Thursday 30 -

We, the below signed organizations, denounce before the national and international community the aggressions to which workers from the sugar cane industry were subjected to early this morning, and we denounce that as human rights organizations we have been verbally assaulted and impeded in carrying out verifications of events by the National Police and the army.

Thursday 30 -

CAGAYAN DE ORO — Rock-wielding farmers, desperate that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) will end this year, stormed the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) regional office in Barangay Carmen, Cagayan de Oro Wednesday.

Monday 20 -

The characteristics of each region should be considered in assessing the sustainability of companies, since the parameters vary from country to country, both in farming methods as in legislation. The thesis was presented by the European Representative of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA), Emmanuel Desplechin, during the 9th Conference GlobalGAP, held in Germany , on October 16, 2008.

Wednesday 8 -

BOGOTA, Oct 7 (IPS) - "We sugar cane cutters are neither delinquents nor terrorists; we are honest workers demanding respect for our rights," say Colombia’s cane harvesters, who have been on strike since Sept. 15, demanding basic rights.

Wednesday 8 -

Whether Kinyara Sugar Works Limited workers are right to be concerned about the security of their jobs or not, it is surprising that the local and national leaders have chosen to remain silent and left the matter in the hands of the employers who, as expected, have sought to reassure their employees.

Monday 6 -

MUMBAI: Sugar factories in Maharashtra, leading producer of sugarcane in India, are all set to embrace new technologies and measures to drastically c

Friday 3 -

SANTO DOMINGO — The Dominican Republic is shipping sugar to the European Union under a new economic partnership that officials say could eventually triple the country's sugar exports.

Wednesday 1 -

Cadbury-Schweppes is not going to get away easily with axing iconic New Zealand sweets.

September 2008

Monday 22 -

Colombia - S.O.S: SUGAR CANE CUTTERS IN GRAVE DANGER

Wednesday 3 -

A sugar company intending to grow cane in Msambweni District has been sued by area residents seeking compensation for crops it had allegedly destroyed.

The residents, numbering more than 2,000, also want the High Court to issue a declaration entitling them to the parcel of land which they claim was improperly leased to the Kwale International Sugar Company.

August 2008

Friday 22 -

Biofuel production in Brazil will have no effect on food production or the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest over the next few years, according to a report published Tuesday in Sao Paulo.

July 2008

Sunday 20 -

The sugar factory being constructed in Mayuge district, 28km from Jinja town, is expected to employ over 1,000 people when it opens in February next year.

Thursday 17 -

DILI, Jun 17 (IPS) - The East Timor government’s recent decision to grant vast lands to an Indonesian company to plant sugar cane has been heavily criticised by Timorese society, who are demanding that the government immediately revoke the contract with the foreign company.

Tuesday 15 -

The Kakira Outgrowers Rural Development Fund has built science laboratories for Busedde College and Buyengo Secondary School, both in Jinja district.

Sunday 13 -

Kenya: Negotiate Tana River Sugar Project

Friday 11 -

Jamaican unions pledge to work with sugar owners

Tuesday 8 -

The powerful and politically savvy Fanjul family is in the catbird seat when it comes to the multibillion-dollar Everglades restoration plan.

Sunday 6 -

Kenya: UK Blamed Over Mumias Sugar's Tana Delta Row

Saturday 5 -

Kenya : Biofuels plan could break the law

June 2008

Monday 30 -

The growing dilemma of the production of biofuels and their human costs

Thursday 26 -

The United States may drop a tariff on Brazilian ethanol. But the industry is still the victim of much misplaced criticism

Thursday 26 -

Only a fraction of the Sh24 billion sugar project along Tana River that has attracted opposition from the community has been given the go ahead.

Thursday 26 -

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 26, 2008 (ENS) - Kenya's Tana River Delta, inhabited by 350 species of birds, lions, elephants, rare sharks and reptiles, is about to be converted to sugar cane production over the objections of conservationists and local communities.

Wednesday 25 -

Kenya: Lobbyists Vow to Block Tana River Sugar Project

Tuesday 24 -

55 dos resgatados trabalhavam na Usina Agrisul, em Icém (SP), que faz parte do Grupo José Pessoa - reincidente em casos de trabalho degradante. Usina Moema, de Orindiúva (SP), assumiu responsabilidade por outras 63 pessoas

Wednesday 18 -
Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
the article...

Monday 16 -

Saturday 14 -

THE Indian nationals brought to install equipment at Fiji Sugar Corporation mills said their working conditions have improved.

Friday 13 -

India, the world's second largest sugar producer behind Brazil, may be forced to import the sweetener. Disgruntled sugar farmers are switching to other crops because mills are not able to pay them the mandated price. The industry blames artificially high prices set by state governments as a sop to the powerful voting bloc of 50 million sugar farmers. Details from VOA Correspondent Steve Herman in New Delhi.

Tuesday 10 -

Brazilian Ethanol : Of Human Bondage (WSJ)

Tuesday 10 -

Biofuels: Brazil disputes cost of sugar in the tank

Tuesday 10 -

Iran : Sugar cane factory workers' Protest Gathering attacked by suppressive forces

Tuesday 10 - India : Farmers continue siege at Uttar Pradesh sugar mill

Lucknow, June 10: Thousands of sugarcane farmers continued for the second day their siege of a sugar mill in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut district to demand their long pending dues.

Friday 6 -

The real villains in the food crisis are the shocking subsidies and wastage found in North America and Europe

Thursday 5 -

· Half a million jobs will go in drive to mechanisation
· Western focus on biofuels has led to labour reforms

Wednesday 4 -

Global food shortages have made biofuels unpopular, but it remains an open question whether they do more harm than good

Wednesday 4 -

Half a million jobs and 500 years of tradition are to be phased out in Brazil's booming sugar cane industry to satisfy western demands for more socially acceptable work practices in the biofuel sector.

May 2008

Thursday 29 -

In Brazil, Amnesty International pointed to four cases where more than 1,700 sugar cane workers were rescued from forced labor and slavery conditions.

Wednesday 28 -

Amnesty condemns forced cane labor in Brazil

Tuesday 27 -

WWF urges Brazil biofuel projects

Thursday 22 -

Kenya: 100 Families Evicted Over Cane Project

Wednesday 21 -

Poor practices taint Brazil's ethanol industry

Wednesday 14 -

UK : Demolition begins at sugar plant

Wednesday 14 -

Biofuels answer to climate change: UN, EU

April 2008

Wednesday 30 -

Biofuels threaten lands of 60 million tribal people

Friday 25 -

India : Sugar firm land row turns bitter

Wednesday 23 -

Kenya: Residents Say Eviction is Unfair

Wednesday 23 -

Sugar workers demand release of bonus

Monday 21 -

Kenya: Balance Bio-Fuel Sourcing And Meeting Food Demand

Sunday 20 -

Fiji : Sugar union chief resigns

Friday 18 -

Guyana seeks to end sugar worker protest

Friday 11 -

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Brazil and the Netherlands agreed Friday to work together on the sustainable production of biofuels and to help developing nations establish their own crops to make alternatives to fossil fuels.

Wednesday 2 -

Washington, D.C.—Over 700 community members and ex-sugarcane workers from the Pacific coast of Nicaragua filed a complaint yesterday with the International Finance Corporation for injuries to their health and environment caused by the operations of Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL). NSEL received a $55 million loan from the IFC in 2006 to increase its sugarcane production and to fund the construction of an ethanol plant.  The complaint to the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, the mechanism established to hold the IFC accountable to communities for violations of environmental and social standards, presents evidence that NSEL activities violated these standards. 

Wednesday 2 -

A SUGAR importer has taken a High Court action for damages against Greencore arising out of a European Commission decision it had abused its dominant market position during the 1980s and 1990s.

Wednesday 2 -

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - It's been almost two months since the sugar refinery explosion. Since then, we've shared stories of so many fundraisers for the families who've been directly impacted by this tragedy.

Tuesday 1 -

THE Muljibhai Madhvani Foundation will this year, offer over sh400m in university scholarships to Ugandan students for the 2008/2009 academic year. The funds will go to merit worthy students who lack financial backing in the fields of Agriculture, Sciences, Information Technology, Commerce and Medicine.

March 2008

Monday 31 -

O Juiz Federal do Trabalho Luiz Antonio Zanqueta concedeu liminar, em 14 de março de 2008, em Ação Civil Pública ajuizada pelo Ministério Público do Trabalho – Ofício de Bauru, assegurando importantes direitos aos cortadores de cana empregados pelo condomínio agrícola Airton Edgar Augusto e Outros, do Grupo Cafeálcool, de Cafelândia, interior de São Paulo. Na decisão da Vara do Trabalho de Lins, foi determinada à empresa o cumprimento de nove obrigações legais, sob pena de pagar multa diária de quinhentos reais por trabalhador encontrado em situação irregular.

Tuesday 18 -

Madhvani Group of Companies, an international investment group, has pledged to make Rwanda self sufficient in sugar production within the next three years.

This was revealed by the group Managing Director, Mayur Madhvani, after his meeting with President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro yesterday.

"Rwanda needs 22,000 tonnes of sugar annually, we are currently producing 16,000 tonnes; we intend to increase it to the required quantity within three years," said Madhvani.

Monday 17 -

Mumias Sugar Company is changing its farmer recruitment policy and starting a dedicated training institution as it seeks to boost efficiency ahead of full liberalisation of the sugar market in 2012.

Saturday 15 -

Suspected communist rebels torched Sunday trans-loading stations of two sugar milling companies in Negros Occidental.

Saturday 8 -

A flourishing wetland on Kenya’s northern coast is under serious threat from plans to grow vast amounts of sugarcane, partly for biofuel production. Developers want to transform nearly 20,000 hectares of the spectacular Tana River Delta, into sugarcane plantations with other parts of the Delta earmarked for rice.

Thursday 6 -

A strike by sugarcane transporters at Mumias Sugar Company entered the fourth day Thursday, completely paralyzing operations at the company.

February 2008

Sunday 24 -

WWF Thailand is currently collaborating with sugar growers and processors to ensure the sugar used by The Coca Cola Company is produced with minimal adverse social and environmental impacts. To that end, WWF is studying the impacts of sugarcane production and processing on the environment in northeast Thailand.

Saturday 23 -

A newly established sugar processing factory in Babati is facing hitches as local sugarcane farmers are refusing to supply raw materials to the firm.

Monday 18 -

Biofuel blight threatens spectacular Kenyan wetland

Saturday 16 -

 flourishing wetland on Kenya’s northern coast is under serious threat from plans to grow vast amounts of sugarcane, partly for biofuel production. Developers want to transform nearly 20,000 hectares of the spectacular Tana River Delta, into sugarcane plantations with other parts of the Delta earmarked for rice.

Thursday 14 -

ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The Dominican sugar industry is striking back at two documentaries that depict Haitian cane-cutters working in dangerous conditions for little pay in the Dominican Republic.

Saturday 9 -

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The United States said Wednesday it would provide $5.5 million to the Philippines to help combat the use of child labor.

Wednesday 6 -

At least 76 indigenous people were murdered in Brazil in 2007, 58 percent more than in 2006. The killings increased the most in the west-central state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where the Guaraní people are confined to territories too small for them to maintain their traditional way of life.

Wednesday 6 -

MANILA (AFP) - The United States is to donate 5.5 million dollars to fight child labour in the Philippines, the US embassy said Wednesday.

Friday 1 -

MOORESTOWN — Todd Moreland says his mission is to help one family at a time.

January 2008

Wednesday 30 -

The police rank and six sugar workers who suffered pellet wounds following Monday's fiery protest at Bath Settlement have all been discharged from hospital but harvesters are demanding that charges be dropped against those who were arrested before they resume work.

Tuesday 29 -

 saw the Bloomberg documentary Deadly Brew, the Human Toll of Ethanol, which aired last Thursday and I have to agree with some of the criticisms that UNICA levels at the film.

Monday 28 -

Bloomberg TV : Deadly Brew - The Human Toll of Ethanol

Monday 28 -

Brazilian MP Fernando de Fabinho (Democrat for the state of Bahia) has introduced a law proposal that aims to phase out manual sugarcane harvesting within ten years and that ensures stricter evaluation and penalisation procedures for companies that still set fire to their plantations (which is needed for manual harvesting).

Wednesday 23 -

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

Tuesday 22 -

Kakira Sugar Works have been given an opportunity to respond to Richard Todwong's interesting and sensitive article on the issues of the proposed sugar investment in Acholi.

Tuesday 22 -

Governments in Europe and elsewhere have begun rolling back generous, across-the-board subsidies for biofuels, acknowledging that the environmental benefits of these fuels have often been overstated.

Tuesday 22 -

BACOLOD CITY – Sugar industry leaders and Negros Occidental officials formed a task force to help sugar industry workers cope with a lengthy “dead season” when there is no work in plantations or mills.

Monday 21 -

Ethanol production in Brazil is not causing deforestation in the Amazon region, says Peter Zuurbier, Associate Professor and Director the Latin America Office of Wageningen University, the world's leading center of expertise on tropical agriculture.

Monday 21 -

On the basis of what has happened over the past year in the bioenergy and biofuels debate, Biopact concludes that to many European organisations Africa does simply not exist. We regret this, because last time we checked, the continent did exist. We have been there. Sub-Saharan Africa is a continent with great potential, but in urgent need of concrete opportunities to develop.

Monday 21 -

THE Sugar Corporation of Uganda (SCOUL) has reinstates 50 workers who had been fired for taking part in a violent strike over poor remunerations last year.

Sunday 20 -

Researchers from the University of Ghent and the from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO), have come to some highly counter-intuitive findings about environmentalism, agriculture and the key drivers of conflict and social instability in the third world.

Monday 14 -

ADDIS ABABA: India has agreed to give Ethiopia a $640 million credit out of a total $1.3 billion needed to boost Ethiopia's sugar production, officials from the two countries said on Monday.

Saturday 12 -

Kuretê Lopes, a 69-year-old Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous woman, has become the latest victim of land-related violence which blights the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Kuretê Lopes died when she was shot in the chest by a private security guard during an eviction from farm lands that the Guarani-Kaiowá claim as ancestral.

Thursday 10 -

Near what remains of the first sugar factory in Brazil, built in 1877 with a sign in Latin over the entrance that translates as “Sweet is the Reward of Work,” Danuza Gomes da Silva swings a glinting knife as she makes her way down the length of a field cutting cane.

Wednesday 9 -

THE European Union agriculture ministers have recently agreed to cut the prices offered to European sugar farmers by 36%, bringing the European Union sugar rules into line with global frameworks.

Tuesday 8 -

Okinawa’s sugar cane industry is gaining international attention as a viable means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming.

Monday 7 -

Brazil's federal government is tightening the rules on ethanol producers for the PIS/Cofins social security tax, daily financial newspaper Gazeta Mercantil reported Monday.

Friday 4 -

HUBLI: The 66-day-old dharna staged by women relatives of workers of the Karnataka Cooperative Sugar Factory (KCSF), Sangur, on the Deputy Commissioner’s office premises in Haveri, ended on Wednesday evening with the arrest of all the protesters.

Wednesday 2 -

Marcos Jank, president of the Sugarcane Union Industry (Unica) in Brazil recently said that, "We're ready to discuss an environmental, social and economic certification of ethanol."

December 2007

Thursday 20 -

Guyana is not going to agree to the European Union's contention that this country's sugar products, or those originating in one Cariforum country and processed or refined in another, are not eligible for preferences in Europe under the rules of origin.

Friday 14 -

A number of women here in St. Kitts and Nevis, have engaged in a project entitled “Livelihood creation for women made redundant by the closure of the sugar industry.”

Tuesday 11 -

Our government wisely wishes to diversify the economy. A carrot is dangled by underscoring job opportunities - more than 3000 jobs at a minimum wage of P600 per month - by cultivating 10,000 hectares of sugar cane and harnessing the water of the Zambesi River.

Monday 10 -

India : Three die due to asphyxia at sugar factory in Sangli

Sunday 9 -

 50-year-old man was killed on the spot and seven others seriously injured when a giant steel plate fell on them in a private sugar plant at Kurumbur near Arantangi in Pudukkottai District of Tamil Nadu today.

Monday 3 -

They live in primitive barracks and earn a pittance, toiling for hours in the blistering heat as sugar cane cutters in the Dominican Republic

November 2007

Tuesday 20 -

Uganda - Workers burn sugarcane plantations

Thursday 15 - Highlights and News-Workers’ Struggles in Iran

Highlights and News-Workers’ Struggles in Iran

October 2007

Wednesday 31 -

Sugarcane workers’ representatives are released on bail - Triniada & tobago

Wednesday 31 -

The Afar people happen to inhabit in area with great strategic significance in the Horn of Africa. The Afar case has not been mentioned anywhere concerning human right violation, internal displacements and the livelihood related challenges they face due to board conflicts.

Tuesday 23 -

A recent law school graduate teams with an experienced public-interest attorney to take on a sugar baron on behalf of exploited migrant workers.

Wednesday 17 -

Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva has urged African countries to take up the use of biofuels as a way of improving their economic independence.

Tuesday 2 -

With machinelike precision, 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 over and over again for as long as 12 hours a day.

Monday 1 -

Brazil's sugar cane cutters pay the cost of cleaner fuel

August 2007

Tuesday 28 -

Demand for biofuels is driving the destruction of Brazil's cerrado

Friday 24 -

The possible elimination of a 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on imports of Brazilian ethanol to the U.S. has become a vital issue in Brasilia due to the country’s potential economic, environmental, and social repercussions.

July 2007

Tuesday 31 -

HSBC loaned cash to company accused of slave-like conditions

Monday 30 -

Brazil : HSBC loaned cash to company accused of slave-like conditions

Friday 6 -

EU joins call for global biofuel market with strict regulations

Thursday 5 -

LA ISLA, Nicaragua – Ursula Tobal knows the names of almost all the 20 widows who live on this tiny islet between two narrow streams, and almost all the orphaned children who play in the dusty fields.

Wednesday 4 -

Half Million Afar Pastoralists Risk Displacement and Environmental Disaster In the Awash Valley of Ethiopia!

June 2007

Friday 22 -

Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., the U.S.'s largest ethanol producer, is preparing to enter the sugar-cane-ethanol business in Brazil, company executives say. Such a move by the grain and ethanol giant would mark an endorsement of a gasoline substitute that competes directly with the corn-based approach used by U.S. ethanol companies.

Thursday 21 -

Brazil’s president Luiz Lula Da Silva said his friendship with Dominican leader Leonel Fernandez, with whom he said shares common ideals, and "his visit consolidates the association that we are constructing in Latin America for more just societies, for rights to nourishment, right to the quality education and democratic values."

Wednesday 20 -

A meeting on 16 June with the board of conciliators failed to resolve any of the outstanding issues under negotiation between the National Union of Plantation and Agricultural Workers (NUPAW) and Zambia Sugar, said Mailoni Kabuyali, NUPAW general secretary, in an interview with The Sugar Worker.

Tuesday 19 -

Cane cutters working in six factories went on strike around 13 June to support their demands for an increase in the basic wage for the category, improved working conditions, changes to the system of payments, and to end outsourcing practices by employers. Workers returned to work on 18 June, according to sources with Feraesp, the São Paulo federation of rural workers.

Monday 18 -

A convention of the Pakistan Sugar Mills Workers (PSMW) condemned categorically the contract and daily wage system practiced by millers, which contravenes national labour laws and decisions by the judiciary.

Thursday 7 -

The feedstock for Brazilian ethanol is sugarcane. The Brazilian government has invested in research designed to improve sugarcane varieties that have resulted in sugarcane that is more resistant to drought and pests and yields higher sugar content. During the last 30 years, sugarcane yields have increased three-fold.

Friday 1 -

Brazil is a well known, large user of sugar-cane based ethanol; 80% of all new cars sold in Brazil are "flex-fuel" models that run on gasoline, ethanol or any combination of the two. Ethanol currently sells for about half the price of gasoline, gasoline that is very inexpensive accounts for as much as 20% of Brazil's transport fuel market. Increasing international demand and billions of financial dollars has resulted in Brazil becoming a major exporter of ethanol.

May 2007

Sunday 27 -

CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua - The people crammed into the stifling basketball gym. They filled the court, lined the walls and tumbled beyond the doors onto the sun-blistered streets.

Wednesday 23 -
Memorandum International Justice Mission
the article...

Tuesday 22 -

UNICA the São Paulo Sugarcane Agroindustry Union, has produced two handy books answering some common questions about Brazil's sugarcane and ethanol industry. The publications are made available to larger audiences in the context of the upcoming Ethanol Summit 2007, to be held in São Paulo early next month.

Wednesday 16 -

BRASILIA, Brazil: The presidents of Brazil and Senegal on Wednesday signed an agreement opening the way for the production and use of biofuels in Senegal and in the rest of Africa.

Tuesday 15 -

Brazil will push to improve working conditions for sugarcane cutters who harvest most of the cane that is turned into ethanol for the nation's booming biofuel industry, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday.

Monday 14 -

According to government figures, nearly 2,000 current and former employees of two sugar mills in the Chichigalpa region of northwestern Nicaragua suffer from chronic renal insufficiency (CRI), a fatal kidney disease. While the cause remains a mystery, a workers group puts the death toll at more than 560 employees of one of the mills alone over the past 30 years. Residents point to the chemicals used in sugar-cane fields at the San Antonio and Monte Rosa mills, which produce most of Nicaragua's sugar exported to the US. The mills deny responsibity, and say workers who sued the companies presented no scientific evidence.

Saturday 5 -

Bernard Duhamel and Jean Raux, two experts from France, met with Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud on Wednesday to discuss the core elements of Guyana’s biofuel plans. Persaud told the two EU officials that Guyana prefers to look at sugarcane production for ethanol and utilise coconut as a potential for biodiesel.

April 2007

Friday 27 -

The popularity of bio-fuels, more particularly ethanol, has led to an increase in corn prices which, in turn, has caused a spike in US food prices. With the Caribbean importing most of its food from the United States, this will result in a substantial rise in the region's food bill and, as a consequence, an increase in inflation.

Monday 23 -

South Africa: Biofuels vs Food Crops?

Monday 9 -

Tired of waiting for the demarcation of their lands, the Potiguara Indians, in the municipality of Rio Tinto, in the Brazilian northeastern state of Paraíba, repossessed part of their land, which had been invaded by a sugar cane mill. The area used to be occupied by the Rafaela Ranch.

Monday 2 -

This Saturday, Presidents George Bush and Lula Da Silva will meet in Camp David to continue discussions on increasing ethanol production and trade. Under proposed plans, the fuel would be derived primarily from Brazilian sugarcane sources.

March 2007

Friday 23 -

Sertãozinho, Sao Paulo State, Brazil - Companhia Nacional de Açucar e Álcool (“CNAA”), a joint venture between founding shareholders Santa Elisa and Global Foods Holding, has closed a US $240 million private equity placement with an investor consortium led by the Carlyle/Riverstone Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund. ING Bank in Sao Paolo acted as advisor in the transaction. Riverstone committed US $187 million of the total $240 million round.

Friday 16 -

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vetoed a measure Friday that activists feared could worsen the plight of debt slaves in Latin America's largest nation.

Friday 9 -

A public spat over when 200 000 tons of duty-free sugar should be imported from the Common Market for East and Southern African (Comesa) bloc to forestall a sugar shortage in Kenya has exposed potential economic sabotage by members of the ruling party.

Friday 9 -

Behind rusty gates, the heart of Brazil's energy revolution can be found in the stale air of a squalid red-brick tenement building. Inside, dozens of road-weary migrant workers are crammed into minuscule cubicles, filled with rickety bunk-beds and unpacked bags, preparing for their first day at work in the sugar plantations of Sao Paulo.

Friday 9 -

Producing fuels from sugarcane, castor bean, and soybeans - the so-called biofuels - is being proposed as an economic alternative for small farmers and as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, which are expensive and pollute the environment.

Friday 9 -

Increasing the production of bio-fuels would have a disastrous impact on poor communities in Latin America, according to anti-poverty agency ActionAid.

Tuesday 6 -

On Jan. 22 the Lula administration announced it will increase federal funding for Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry by almost US$6 billion over the next four years. One day later, U.S. President George W. Bush declared in the State of the Union address his goal to reduce U.S. use of gasoline 20% by the year 2017.

Tuesday 6 -

Brazil's Ethanol Plan Breeds Rural Poverty, Environmental Degradation

Saturday 3 -

THE European Union yesterday signed a J$454-million (euro5.218-million) financing agreement with the Jamaican government as part of a seven-year assistance to the ailing local sugar industry.

Saturday 3 -

WASHINGTON, March 2 — President Bush, hoping to reduce demand for oil in the Western Hemisphere, is preparing to finish an agreement with Brazil next week to promote the production and use of ethanol throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, according to administration officials.

Friday 2 -

Jamaica and Brazil have signed two agreements under which the South American nation will assist with the modernisation of the local sugar industry, help Jamaica develop ethanol, and provide technical co-operation in tropical fruit processing.

Thursday 1 -

Roger Clarke has conceded that Government-owned sugar factories would lose between US five and eight cents per pound on exported sugar this year, due to high production costs.

February 2007

Monday 26 -
Arte Television
the article...

Friday 23 -

Jamaica and Brazil have signed two agreements under which the South American nation will assist with the modernisation of the local sugar industry, help Jamaica develop ethanol, and provide technical co-operation in tropical fruit processing.

Thursday 8 -

In Brazil ethanol has become economically competitive with gasoline, and the country's biofuels program could serve as a world model for producing sustainable energy, officials say.

Wednesday 7 -

The country's first shipment of sugar since the start of the 2006/2007 crop, consisting of 21,000 tonnes and valued at US$12 million, left the island on Monday for London as part of the country's sugar export arrangement with the European Union.

Saturday 3 -

Santo Domingo.- An innovative project to produce ethanol in the country has been started by executives of the Central Roman Corporation and the Vicini Group, installing processing plants that will use Dominican sugar cane as raw material.

Friday 2 -

GUERRA, Dominican Republic - After declining for years, the Caribbean sugar industry is suddenly looking sweet again as a source of ethanol — the alternative fuel that some see as an answer to sky-high oil prices.

January 2007

Saturday 27 -

Shell Ethiopia will have to wait to recover nearly half a million in debt owed to it by the Tendaho Sugar Factory, a court determined. The factory, which is still under construction, still has no assets or cash at its disposition to settle the debt for oil and lubricants supplied.

Wednesday 24 -

FROME, Westmoreland - Fred Hamaty, a former People's National Party (PNP) senator, is recommending that government enact a 'Cane Fires Prevention Act' in a bid to stamp out the illicit burning of cane.

Sunday 21 -

FROME, Westmoreland - In apparent desperation, the Government says it will, this week, unleash the army and the police on arsonists who are being blamed for $350 million worth of illicit cane fires in the Westmoreland sugar belt last year.

Wednesday 17 -

LUSAKA - Zambia Sugar Plc plans to raise sugar output by almost 70 per cent to 440 000 tonnes by 2011 to meet rising local demand and also for export, the company said yesterday.

Wednesday 17 -

The Biofuels Act of 2006 (Republic Act 9367) was formally signed into law Wednesday during a ceremony at the presidential Palace befitting a landmark piece of legislation.

December 2006

Monday 18 -

Is the sugar you eat a product of slave labor? That's the accusation leveled by one of the readers of this blog, who pointed us to the Dominican Republic, where, she said, Haitian migrant workers are kept in slave camps, forced to work in the fields under armed guard, for a pittance.

Monday 18 -

A United States based company, Lemna International, said it plans to establish a $50million (about N6.3billion) ethanol production plant in Taraba state within the next four months.

Monday 18 -

LACASSINE - "Ethanol could be the salvation of Louisiana agriculture," says Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry Bob Odom. He and others are hoping the future begins here.

Friday 8 -

Thursday 7 -

Kenya risks violating an international convention if it allows a regional authority and a sugar company to establish a factory in the Tana Delta.

Thursday 7 -

Kenya risks violating an international convention if it allows a regional authority and a sugar company to establish a factory in the Tana Delta.

November 2006

Wednesday 22 -

The world sugar economy is like a kaleidoscope: permanently and significantly changing features and shapes reflecting its tremendous diversity and dense complexity. This year’s seminar tries to embrace the hot issues and demanding challenges the world sugar industry is facing in a rapidly transforming and more and more globalized, competitive environment.

Monday 20 -

Thousands of Tana River residents held a demonstration at Garsen to protest against Tana and Athi River Development Authority (Tarda) and Mumias Sugar Company's plans to establish a sugar factory in the area.

Tuesday 14 -

Sudan is ranked second in the African continent following South Africa in sugar production. That is because Sudan has great potentials in this regard, which include natural resources and competent human cadres.

Tuesday 7 -
BSR 2006 Conference: Innovative Strategies - Measurable Impacts
the article...

Wednesday 1 -

On Oct. 31, Energy Bulletin published the text of a letter to the Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change decrying the risks of biofuels. Calling biofuels "a disaster in the making," the signatories to the letter, who include the Global Forest Coalition and a host of other NGOs, asked the conference to "immediately suspend all subsidies and other forms of inequitable support for the import and export of biofuels."

October 2006

Monday 30 -

ALL employees of Kinyara Sugar Works Ltd will retain their jobs as the new management takes over the sugar factory.

Monday 30 -

Kenya will open a new sugar factory in 2006 at a cost of $300-million with the backing of a Swiss bank to mill a fast-growing cane variety, investors and officials said yesterday.

Monday 30 -

ALL employees of Kinyara Sugar Works Ltd will retain their jobs as the new management takes over the sugar factory.

Thursday 26 -

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - Thousands of workers on Guyana's sugar cane estates were on strike for a second day yesterday to press the state-owned industry for pay increases, a union leader said.

Thursday 26 -

THE debate started by President Yoweri Museveni to degazett part of Mabira forest to SCOUL to boost sugar production, investment, jobs, and tax revenue should not be rested until consensus based on valid facts is reached.

Tuesday 24 -

Biomass is rapidly becoming an important source for energy generation and bio fuel worldwide. Many studies indicate that the regions with the highest potential to produce and export bio energy are notably d in developing countries.

Monday 9 -

Outcome of the 30 &31st May Brazilian seminar at the initiative of Ethical Sugar on social and environmental issues with a sustentable development dynamic. 

Thursday 5 -

From Rio de Janeiro to Amsterdam, biofuels are all the rage but can "green fuel" take on oil to become a long-term viable alternative to fossil fuels?

September 2006

Friday 29 -

From a bushy factory area to a now sprawling sugar factory, producing 150 tonnes of sugar per day, Kabuye Sugar Works is perhaps the best example of a successful privatisation process.

Saturday 23 -

Students from Makerere University Faculty of Forestry and Nature Conservation yesterday took to the streets protesting the planned sale of Mabira Forest to an investor.

Friday 22 -

The All Island Jamaica Cane Farmers Association (AIJCFA) has pulled out of a partnership with Brazil-based sugar company Aracatu in its bid to purchase the cash-strapped Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ), which has been put up for sale by the government.

Thursday 14 -

Compared to their oil-business counterparts in the likes of Saudi Arabia, South Africa’s new energy ‘sheiks’ lead fairly ordinary lives.

Thursday 14 -

South Africa’s State-owned Central Energy Fund (CEF) has signed a memorandum of under- standing with Brazilian petrochemicals giant Petrobras to conduct a feasibility study concerning the introduction of bioethanol in South Africa.

Monday 11 -

As far as we know, there is no "recent report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which shows that Uganda produces a meagre eight tonnes per hectare of sugar (?) as opposed to Malawi's 80 tonnes per hectare".

Saturday 9 -
New Vision
the article...

Saturday 9 -

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) - The president of the Inter-American Development Bank yesterday invited investors to apply for grants to develop renewable energy projects in the Caribbean, announcing a US$20 million (euro15.73 million) fund.

Tuesday 5 -
Ethanol Producer Magazine - By Marianne Osterkorn
the article...

Tuesday 5 -

Santo Domingo.- The government announced today that a ethanol fuel production plant will be installed for an initial cost of 30 million dollars, in the Boca Chica sugar field. 

August 2006

Monday 28 -

Ebonyi State Government has joined the rank of states in Nigeria seeking alternative energy sources, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, (MOU), with a Chinese-supported Nigeria firm to establish a $80m(N10.4bn) Ethanol producing factory that would utilize Cassava and Sugar cane as major raw materials.

Monday 28 -

SA SHOULD build an additional five sugar mills in order to stimulate ethanol production, a representative of Brazilian sugar and ethanol equipment group Dedini said on Friday.

Sunday 27 -

The Ministry of Water Resources announced that 35 per cent of the works on Tendaho and Kessem irrigation dams have been completed.

Saturday 26 -

Research into the development of renewable energy and biofuels in the Philippines is under way with the Private Enterprise Partnership (PEP) for the Philippines currently accepting proposals from local and foreign consultants to undertake the study. This is made possible by funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.

"We feel it is the right time to do this study, given the interest and growing awareness from all sectors about cleaner sources of energy, especially for the transport sector."

— Euan Marshall, Private Enterprise Partnership-Philippines, Country Coordinator

Wednesday 23 -

THE Sugar Corporation of Uganda wants to take 25 per cent of Mabira Forest to plant more sugar cane.

Monday 21 -

North Queensland farmers in drier areas could soon be growing tropical sugar beet.

Friday 18 -

The All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union is calling upon all ex-employees of Caroni(1975) Limited to join with the

Today the march will begin from Mon Repos to Couva.Tomorrow they will walk from Couva to Charlieville and on Friday they are scheduled to walk from Charlieville to Port-of-Spain, Woodford Square, where all the marchers will gather for a meeting.

The union is joining the walk because the Government has failed to honour its commitment regarding the land distribution process and also giving funds to the daily paid contributory pension plan.

Civil Rights Association (TTCRA) and its President Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, in the “March for Justice for All” from Cedros to Port-of-Spain.The march is for justice to workers, farmers, vendors, land tenants and occupiers of state lands and began on Friday August 11th and ends on August 18th 2006.

Friday 18 -

OFFICIALS from forestry, National Environment Management Authority and the National Water and Environment are united in protesting the sale of part of Mabira Forest Reserve to Scoul.

Wednesday 16 -

WORKERS of Kinyara Sugar Works (KSWL) will not be affected by the take-over by Rai Holdings, privatisation state minister Lukia Chekamondo has said.

Wednesday 16 -

Indonesia is seeking more investment in industries producing energy from palm oil, sugar cane and jatropha to help create five million new jobs and cut government fuel subsidies, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Wednesday.

Monday 14 -

AN environmentalist has warned that the rest of Mabira Forest will be degraded if part of it is turned into a sugarcane plantation.

Thursday 10 -

KINYARA Sugar Works Ltd workers have resumed work after calling off a three-day strike that had paralysed work. The sugar factory workers laid down their tools and were demanding that TSB/Bookertate releases the provident fund money, which it had been deducting from their salaries.

Tuesday 8 -

The progress at Tendaho Sugar Development Project in the Afar Regional State has suffered a serious drawback, missing the critical month of July 2006, a rainy season that was planned to give the project its highest water catchments.

Monday 7 -

As part of its last minute pet project, the federal government recently announced a decision to start the development of ethanol as alternative fuel. That decision comes along with the research on nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The two projects are good.

Saturday 5 -

The Vietnam Sugar and Sugar Cane Association warned that the industry would face severe difficulties after entering the WTO due to low capacity output.

Wednesday 2 -

ESHOWE - From the air, sections of South Africa's sugar country resemble a vast green carpet that has been gently rolled across the landscape.

July 2006

Saturday 29 -

We would like to present the president of Senegal's own words about the new African biofuels association that he announced yesterday in Dakar. Just for the record. The Agence de presse Senegalaise (APS) quotes Mr Abdoulaye Wade as saying:

Friday 28 -

Haiti's wealthier next-door neighbor is struggling to provide treatment to many HIV-infected people, and the problem's especially acute on the bateyes

Thursday 27 -

PGBI Engineering and Constructors, to conduct a study on how to expand its capacity of processing sugarcanes. The factory signed a 7.4 million Br contract with the company two weeks ago; the job has already begun, company officials disclosed.

Monday 24 - Poor working conditions on Uganda’s sugar plantations

The workers say they are paid little money, so they cannot provide for basic needs and also save.

Friday 21 -

The firm, Associated British Foods (ABF), is an international food, ingredients and retail group with extensive network in Britain, United States and other 41 countries with an annual turnover of 5.6 billion pounds.

Friday 21 -

The project, which has been the subject of controversy since it was mooted several years ago, is to begin at the end of September, according to Tarda.

Wednesday 19 -

Are Nicaragua's sugar cane workers, who pick sugar that makes its way to the United States, being poisoned by their employer?

Tuesday 18 - Central Africa sugar firms invest $180 mln for growth

The region's five sugar companies are also working to standardise production practices to ease trade with a view to creating a common regional market in sugar, Samuel Ngoma, commercial delegate for the Groupement des Professionnels du Sucre (GPS) told Reuters.

Tuesday 18 - Ethiopia to boost sugar output, seeks investors

The state-owned Ethiopian Sugar Development Agency (ESDA) said it planned to boost sugar production by upgrading existing factories, building new plants and developing land and water resources.

Monday 10 - Sugar Refineries (ZSR) says its sugar exports declined by 17%

This comes against the backdrop of government recently taking over Mkwasine Estates under the land reform programme. Mkwasine is the biggest sugarcane producer in the country.

Friday 7 - Tens of thousands of jobs disappear in Swaziland

Thousands of Swazi workers were laid off in 2005 and several cooperatives failed because of declining profits, after currency appreciation and cheaper Brazilian sugar made the local product uncompetitive internationally.

June 2006

Tuesday 20 - Swaziland - USA Distillers to expand ethanol plant - Stories by Mbongiseni Ndzimand

The expansion involves increasing production and certain modifications given that alternative sources of raw material will be required.This is contained in their proposal statement which further reads that the company must find new sources of raw material. 

Tuesday 20 -

The authorities, says the ILO, must take immediate action to rectify illegal anti-union measures taken by private and public sugar employers against the IUF-affiliated FSPM TG, beginning with the immediate reinstatement of the union's illegally dismissed president Daud Sukamto.

Thursday 15 - GOVERNMENT’S import bill towards purchase of crude oil would

 "With the continued rise in crude oil prices, we have no option but to utilise other alternative sources of energy as a way of mitigating the foreign exchange spent on crude oil as well as creating employment. In fact when production begins, the import bill will be reduced by 20 per cent," Mutati said. "And it is for this reason that government is putting in place a framework that will regulate and facilitate investment in production of bio-fuel."

Thursday 15 - Spanish and Indian investors are competing to invest in a $150 million sugar plantation

He said it had also drawn interest from a local business consortium. "We are set to take off with the project this year and it has attracted a Spanish company and some Indian investors who are currently on site checking out many things," Phiri told Reuters in Johannesburg, where he was attending a Zambian investment conference.

Saturday 10 - The Zambian government is talking up a new $150 million cane sugar project

Both Spanish and Indian investors have been mentioned.

Saturday 3 - What are Swaziland’s main exports?

Sugar and wood pulp remain our most important foreign-exchange earners. Mining has declined in importance in recent years with the depletion of deposits, with only coal and quarry stone mines still active. Sugar is playing an increasingly important role. Raw sugar is exported and then imported back in a different format. One of our main exports is Coca-Cola concentrate. The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Swaziland supplies the whole of Africa.

May 2006

Friday 19 -
Business week
the article...

Thursday 11 - Workers of closed sugar mill in distress

Family members of approximately 1,250 affected employees of the Dadu Sugar Mills are facing starvation due to its closure since 1998.

Thursday 11 - Punjab govt rejects PAC report on sugar issue

The Punjab government says it is totally unjustified to hold the provincial governments responsible for increase in sugar price.

Thursday 11 - U.S. Borders Open to Mexican Sugar By 2007

Mexico will end taxation of U.S. sugar Jan. 1, 2007, and the U.S. will open its borders to Mexican sugar a year later, officials said.

Wednesday 10 - Scoul to Sell 3 Megawatts to Umeme

The Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited is set to generate six megawatts of biogas three of which would be used by the factory and the surplus sold to Umeme, the Company's Chief Executive Manager, S.C. Khan has said.

April 2006

Friday 28 - Kenya: Sugar Industry is Well Protected, House Told

The sugar industry is stable and is not about to collapse, the House was told.

Agriculture minister Kipruto Kirwa said contrary to allegations, the industry was on an upward swing.

He enumerated the measures the Government had put in place to protect the local industry, top of which was the implementation of measures allowing the importation of only 200,000 tonnes of sugar from Comesa every year.

Wednesday 26 - America’s Sugar Industry Thanks Congressmen

WASHINGTON, D.C.—America’s sugar producers thanked Congressmen Collin Peterson (D-MN.) and Mike Simpson (R-ID) for starting a House Sugar Caucus to help promote and maintain America’s no-cost sugar program in the 2007 Farm Bill.
 

Wednesday 26 - Illovo says Tereos bid talks end, still on with ABF

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Africa's top sugar producer Illovo said it has ended talks with France's Tereos about a potential bid, but is continuing talks with another suitor, Associated British Foods.

Wednesday 26 -

By Holly Jessen and Anduin Kirkbride McElroy - Ethanol Producer Magazine - US

Tuesday 25 - Imported Sugar is Biggest Threat

The sugar industry in Uganda is perhaps one of the most viciously competitive. As the players tussle it out in the market place Bamuturaki Musinguzi asks Mr Cyprian Batala Assistant Commissioner for Trade what the government is doing to make Uganda's sweetened industry a leveled playing ground. Excepts below:

Thursday 20 - Tate & Lyle PLC invests in a Sugar plant in Israel

Tate & Lyle, the global renewable ingredients company, announced the formation of a joint-venture with an Israeli partner to build and operate a sugar plant in Israel.

Thursday 20 - Qarase confident of sugar board

CARETAKER Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase is confident the new board of directors for the Fiji Sugar Corporation will be able to see the restructure of the sugar industry to completion.

Wednesday 19 - Bitter battle over Caribbean sugar

CARIBBEAN SUGAR hangs in the balance today as trade talks with Europe enter a crucial phase.

Tuesday 11 - SWAZILAND: Producing ethanol from sugar will rescue cane growers

"There is a bright future in this. Ethanol prices are going up in Europe, just as sugar prices are declining," John du Plessis, managing director of the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation (RSSC), explained.

March 2006

Monday 27 -

Kenana Sugar Company, the largest company in the sector in the African country, wants to build an ethanol factory and new sugar mills. Three company executives are in Brazil after business. 'Everyone is eyeing the Brazilian example,' stated Mohamed El Tegani, a director at the organization.

February 2006

Monday 13 - Green fuels start now

South Africa is going Brazilian, joining a worldwide scramble to catch up with the South American country’s successful use of the green fuel ethanol as its primary source of liquid energy.

Wednesday 1 - Haitian cane-cutters struggle

Little has changed in the sugar fields of the Dominican Republic since the 1870s - including how workers fare.

January 2006

Wednesday 11 - Sugar strategy to focus on displaced workers

IN LIGHT of the unilateral changes by the European Union (EU) to the Sugar Protocol with African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, Jamaica has developed a country strategy for sugar, which was recently approved by Cabinet.

Thursday 5 - Sugar cane workers’ suit to be heard in federal court

A lawsuit on behalf of migrant workers against Florida Crystals’ Osceola Farms Co. is headed to trial in federal court.

December 2005

Thursday 8 - Multinationals, not farmers, reap biggest rewards in Britain’s share of CAP payouts

Manufacturers of bulk fats and sugar receive millions. Agency refuses to say why firms qualify for payments.

November 2005

Friday 25 - Ethanol is not green

Kevin Davie’s article “Green fuels start now” (Feburary 10) seriously overstates the advantages of ethanol auto-fuels. Ethanol may be 45% cheaper than petrol in Brazil, but anyone who has driven in that country will know that you get significantly fewer kilometers per litre from it than from petrol.

Friday 18 - JV project benefits emerging sugarcane growers

The 2005 Logistics Achiever Platinum award was recently awarded to the successful empowerment company, Buhle Betfu, which is the inspiration of listed South African transport and logistics company, Cargo Carriers. The company initiated the joint-venture sugarcane transport scheme together with a small community of emerging growers in Mpumalanga in 2001.

October 2005

Saturday 15 -

Sugar cane's bitter secret in Brazil

September 2005

Thursday 29 - The Zimbabwe government has intensified efforts to resuscitate the ethanol plant

He said his visit was aimed at familiarising with the situation on the ground and to discuss with the management at Triangle on the possibility of reopening the ethanol plant, which would produce ethanol for blending with petrol. Triangle stopped the production of ethanol for blending with petrol during the 1992 drought when the company could not produce enough sugarcane for ethanol production. However, currently, the company was producing about 30 mm litres of industrial ethanol for export.

Tuesday 27 - Sugar reform: more financial support for ACP countries in 2006

The Development Committee is demanding extra aid for the ACP countries hit by the overhaul of the Community sugar regime. MEPs want the EU to provide €80 million in 2006, double the €40 million proposed by the European Commission when it unveiled the reform in June this year.

May 2005

Friday 20 -

Last week the local papers reminded Brazilians of the signing of the Lei Áurea (Golden Law) by Princesa Isabel on May 13th, 1888, a law effectively abolishing slavery in Brazil.

Sunday 1 - Does the Deccan need more water ?

The river-linking project would lead to degradation of land and adversely affect the rural majority

2005

1 -
Memorandum International Justice Mission
the article...

September 2004

Thursday 23 -

When an American company processes Brazilian ethanol in an El Salvadoran plant, how many tax loopholes is it jumping through? And how many U.S. politicians are going to feign outrage?

January 2004

Saturday 3 - Sugar unit runs into controversy with greens

The setting up of the sugar unit at Kesarolli in Haliyal taluk has run into a controversy. The unit being constructed under the auspices of the Dandeli paper factory at Dandeli is facing charges of encroachment of forest land.

Español

mercredi 18 -

El vicepresidente de la República, Elías Jaua, se presentó ayer en las instalaciones del Central Azucarero Cumanacoa y dio instrucciones de investigar las denuncias de corrupción que recaen sobre ese ingenio, ubicado en Sucre. Esperaban la visita del ministro de Agricultura y Tierra, Juan Carlos Loyo, quien no acudió a la reunión. Sin embargo, la promesa es que el titular del despacho acudirá a esas instalaciones mañana viernes a las 12 del día.

lundi 16 -

Es necesario atacar las causas del trabajo infantil, como primer paso hacia el respeto de los derechos de ese grupo poblacional que sufre explotación laboral.

vendredi 13 -

Trabajan hasta 12 horas por 60 pesos, arriesgando su salud, debido a las condiciones en las que trabajan

jeudi 12 -

jeudi 12 -

Resulta doloroso que en pleno siglo XX1 por la necesidad de llevar algunos pesos a sus hogares niños menores de edad realicen labores del campo que sólo son aptas para adultos, como es el corte de caña de azúcar.

samedi 24 -

Un promedio de 2 mil 500 personas provenientes de diversos estados del Sureste del país, encuentran en la zafra cañera 2011-2012 del sur de Quintana Roo, una oportunidad de ganarse el sustento diario.

mardi 13 -

Una misteriosa enfermedad renal se está convirtiendo en una de las principales causas de muerte de hombres en América Central.

jeudi 8 -
l'article...

jeudi 8 -
l'article...

Saturday 27 -
SDP noticias
the article...

Tuesday 23 -
La Gaceta
the article...