Shell and Cosan - Barjas Negri, Mayor of Piracicaba, São Paulo State
Good morning. My name is Barjas Negri. I am the mayor of the city of Piracicaba. Piracicaba lies in the
State of São Paulo, with almost 370,000 inhabitants. I have been mayor for five years. I'm an economist
and a university teacher.
I worked as Piracicaba's Secretary of Education, Planning Secretary, I worked in the Federal
Government, in the Ministry of Education, in the Ministry of Health, acting as Executive
Secretary and Brazil's Minister of Health for nearly one year.
My private car is a Renault flex. It uses both petrol and ethanol as fuel. Most of the time, I
use ethanol because it is a clean fuel and often cheaper than petrol.
The town hall has an enormous fleet of vehicles. The town hall has more than 400 vehicles. As
replacements, we always buy flex vehicles. Due to a law that incentivises the use of ethanol,
we use this fuel in our official fleet.
The Piracicaba sucro-alcohol industry is very old. Its experience in technological advances spans more
than 50 years. Businesses in Piracicaba have grown because they developed the technology to produce
machines and equipment and apparatus for producing sugar and alcohol. At the same time, a lot of
sugar production units, old plantation units, factories, and later alcohol distilleries were established in
the region.
The Piracicaba area has become a large production centre. First of sugar and later of alcohol. Since the
largest agricultural school in Latin America is located here, a series of research projects was developed
here. The machinery and equipment industry for ethanol production is extremely important for our
regional economy because it creates many jobs, generates a lot of revenue and provides many
opportunities.
The environmental legislation both on a Federal level, a State and Municipal levels is quite strict. Since
inspection controls are strict and demanding, the sector has improved itself, being widely accepted by
society. Brazil's workplace legislation has evolved considerably. The sector has evolved a lot. The unions,
the Ministry of Employment, and the state's Department of Employment carry out rigorous inspections,
so that workers' conditions are suitable.
The State of São Paulo has a special legislation, which aims to gradually reduce manual cane cutting,
with the introduction of machines to perform the mechanical cutting. This offers better working
conditions for field workers. In a few years' time, all the cane harvesting in the State of São Paulo will be
done automatically. That will allow families to live in peace because there won't be any soot from cane
burning. We will have better qualified workers, and industries developing technology to perform
automatic cutting.
This started in São Paulo and it must spread to the rest of the country. It doesn't compete with food
production. On the contrary, it complements it, because Brazil produces adequate levels of food for the
country and the world. We are sure that Brazil is in gear to develop even more, to produce ethanol for
the supply of the national and foreign markets.
We hope that in the future ethanol, being a clean energy developed in Brazil through advanced
technology and because of the global issue of renewable energy, ethanol will contribute a lot towards
Brazil, Latin America and the world being able to gradually replace petroleum derivatives.