PDVSA tries something mildly intelligent

Much as I love to take the piss out of PDVSA, they've got an interesting biofuels experiment I thought worth mentioning. 

Sugar slavery is still big business – even with mechanization

The most effective criticism of Brazil’s biofuels program has not been the food vs. fuels diatribe but rather the excoriation of abhorrent and retrograde conditions of sugar workers. Descriptions of workers cutting cane from dawn to dusk with little access to water and frequent exposure to dangerous crop fires has left the sugar cane ethanol industry with a major public image problem.