Grammars about fire and water in São Paulo’s sugarcane fields

Gramáticas sobre el fuego y el agua en los cañaverales de São Paulo

Abstract

This article takes a closer look at the strategies for naming water and fire in the grammar of sugarcane production in São Paulo - themes that gained centrality in socio-environmental regulations aimed at this production in the first decade of the 2000s. The empirical universe of the research is located in the administrative region of Ribeirão Preto, whose borders are home to a strong presence of mills and sugarcane plantations, as well as an abundance of surface and underground water. The hypothesis is that this grammar operates strategically in response to socio-environmental criticism, while these names take on different facets depending on concrete disputes and situations. Methodological resources include a literature review, a survey and documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews with representatives of the sugar mills and sugarcane suppliers’ associations, as well as the monitoring of lives promoted by CETESB and CanaOnline.

Keywords:
Ruralities and the environment; politics and the environment; socio-environmental conflicts; environment and justification; water and burning

Resumo

Este artigo avança nas estratégias de nomeação da água e do fogo na gramática da produção canavieira paulista - temáticas que ganham centralidade em regulamentações socioambientais direcionadas a essa produção na primeira década dos anos 2000. O universo empírico da pesquisa situa-se na região administrativa de Ribeirão Preto, cujas fronteiras abrigam a forte presença de usinas e canaviais, além da abundância hídrica de águas superficiais e subterrâneas. A hipótese é de que essa gramática opera estrategicamente respondendo a críticas socioambientais; ao passo que essas nomeações assumem diferentes facetas a depender de disputas e situações concretas. Como recursos metodológicos, destaca-se a revisão bibliográfica, o levantamento e análise documental, entrevistas semiestruturadas com representantes de usinas e associações de fornecedores de cana, bem como o acompanhamento de lives promovidas pela CETESB e pela CanaOnline.

Palavras-chave:
Ruralidades e meio ambiente; política e meio ambiente; conflitos socioambientais; meio ambiente e justificação; água e queimadas

Resumen

Este artículo profundiza en las estrategias para nombrar el agua y el fuego en la gramática de la producción de caña de azúcar en São Paulo, temas que ocuparon un lugar central en las regulaciones socioambientales dirigidas a esta producción en la primera década de 2000. El universo empírico de la investigación se localiza en la región administrativa de Ribeirão Preto, en cuyas fronteras hay una fuerte presencia de ingenios y plantaciones de caña de azúcar, así como abundancia de aguas superficiales y subterráneas. La hipótesis es que esta gramática opera estratégicamente en respuesta a las críticas socioambientales, mientras que estas denominaciones adoptan distintos ropajes en función de disputas y situaciones concretas. Los recursos metodológicos incluyen una revisión bibliográfica, una encuesta y análisis documental, entrevistas semiestructuradas con representantes de los ingenios azucareros y asociaciones de proveedores de caña, así como el seguimiento de las vidas promovidas por CETESB y CanaOnline.

Palabras-clave:
Ruralidades y medio ambiente; política y medio ambiente; conflictos socioambientales; medio ambiente y justificación; agua y quema

Introduction

This article analyzes the nomenclature surrounding water and fire within the grammar of contemporary sugarcane production in São Paulo. To this end, the study poses the following questions: what are the behaviors, strategic or otherwise, of the capitals linked to the sugar-alcohol sector in the face of the public debate on the need for socio-environmental regulation of its activities? Historically identified as an important agent in the diffuse contamination of surface and underground water, as well as in soil degradation and air pollution through burning practices since the mid-1980s, how did the sector breakthrough with the expectations of the public-environmental sphere in the first decades of the 21st century?

To answer these questions, the article presents a study in the state of São Paulo, which has had the largest volume of sugarcane cultivation in Brazil since the 1970s (CONAB, 2019). The empirical universe of the analysis is limited to the state’s main producing territory: the administrative region of Ribeirão Preto. Located in the center-east of São Paulo, it is marked by the strong presence of sugar and ethanol mills and stands out for its important water sources, including the waters of the Guarani Aquifer.

Although not limited to this time frame, the study emphasizes the first decade of the 2000s, when significant socio-environmental regulations were formulated in the state, such as the São Paulo Agro-Environmental Protocol (São Paulo, 2007b; 2008) and the Agro-Environmental Zoning (ZAA - Zoneamento Agroambiental) (São Paulo, 2009). The first one aimed to implement technical directives aimed at protecting springs and riparian forests and, above all, gradually eliminating the burning practice in sugarcane plantations. The ZAA, on the other hand, can be considered an offshoot of the Protocol, proposing the state territory division into different areas suitable for sugarcane exploitation, using the water resources situation as one of the criteria.

Methodologically, the research relies on a bibliographical review, documents survey and analysis, and field research, with the completion of four semi-structured interviews between 2021 and 2022, with representatives of mills and sugarcane supplier associations in the region, as well as the Brazilian Agribusiness Association of Ribeirão Preto (ABAG/RP - Associação Brasileira do Agronegócio de Ribeirão Preto). In addition to these methodological resources, we monitored the livestreams on topics related to the study, promoted in 2021 and 2022 by the Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo (CETESB - Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo) and the CanaOnline Platform.

To address the hypothesis that the grammar around water and fire mobilized by the São Paulo sugarcane sector takes on different facets depending on concrete disputes and situations and operates strategically in response to socio-environmental criticism, the article draws on unorthodox readings of Bourdieu’s (2008) research into language and the acceptability of discourses, and the pragmatic notion of criticism by Boltanski and Thévenot (2020) and Boltanski and Chiapello (2020). The dialog with these analytical supports was undertaken within the Brazilian boundaries experience of inscribing environmental issues within the rural sociabilities scope. Thus, far from being a terrain for applying concepts, national agrarian history and the territory of domination relations in a regional context were the determining empirical vectors for reaching the limits of the approaches and mobilizing other analytical contributions. For this reason, other theoretical bridges were added to this dialog, as required by the empirical nature of our findings.

The text is divided into four more topics. In the wake of broader discussions on the environmental issue at a global level, in the next topic we comment on the entry of the Sustainability notion - via socio-environmental regulations - into the productive context of the São Paulo sugar-alcohol sector. The next two topics mobilize some aspects of these regulations to advance the sector’s naming strategies, especially about the social uses of water and fire. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the main results presented and placing them in dialogue with the main studies used in the article.

The Sustainability entry into sugarcane production in São Paulo

The socio-environmental regulations aimed at the sugar-alcohol sector in São Paulo were built amid broader discussions - both temporally and spatially - on the modern environmental issue (Silva; Martins, 2010). Although it is beyond the scope of this text to carry out an exhaustive review of this issue, it is necessary to highlight some aspects of a global environmental problem emergence that has led to the increasing regulation of natural resources exploitation and reinforced guidelines relating to the notion - or notions - of sustainability in Brazil’s rural territories.

Among a scenario based on the emergence of different environmental problems, new concerns about the ecological issue have taken shape at global and local levels. In the rural territories case, the ecological issue has marked analytical (Jollivet, 1998), symbolic (Carneiro, 2014), and political (McCormick, 1992) shifts, highlighting that rural sociabilities go beyond the boundaries of agricultural practices, and revealing new frameworks for addressing issues such as land and water resource management, sustainable territorial development, climate change, cultural preservation, among others.

Strictly speaking, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, marked the entry of environmental issues onto the international political agenda, dealing with water and soil pollution (Ribeiro, 2010). Since then, a conciliatory discourse has taken shape between environmental conservation and economic development, materialized in the use of “sustainable development” category, best presented in the Our Common Future Report (1987). This reading, which articulates the political, social, and economic dimensions to analyze the environmental crisis, prevailed in the 1990s, with Rio-92. To establish international agreements that would mediate anthropogenic actions on the environment and deal with climate change, a set of Conventions was designed to alleviate the world’s environmental problems through international cooperation (Ribeiro, 2010).

Brazil, which hosted the Conference, stood out internationally for its disregard for the environment, especially the Amazon rainforest devastation through logging and illegal burnings, as well as the effects on/of climate change. This topic was sensitive not only to the Rio-92 debates but also to the warnings about the dangers of climate change caused by CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted by fossil fuels burning, which gained centrality with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the wake of this evidence, the Kyoto Protocol was signed, in which industrialized nations undertook to reduce their CO2 emissions.

At the same time, the water issue was also consolidated as a new international agenda. In the same period, the International Conference on Water and the Environment, held in Dublin in 1992, established principles in its Declaration that still guide the development of water policies today. Concerning the principles drawn up at the Dublin Conference, we would highlight “2 - The use and management of water should be inspired by an approach based on the participation of users, managers and decision-makers at all levels” - and “4 - Water has an economic value in all its competitive uses and should be recognized as an economic good” (UN, 1992, p. 04), which established a new management dynamic and enunciation of water management in the public-environmental debate (Cardoso, 2022; Espinoza; Martins, 2021).

As a result of this emerging global concern, there was a significant uptake of environmental demands and agendas at the national level. Not surprisingly, at the beginning of the 2000s, issues related to environmental concerns were on the agenda of the São Paulo sugar-alcohol sector, driven and mediated by the state Environment Secretariat. It was in the midst of efforts to re-signify fuel alcohol economically, politically, and symbolically - raising it to the classification of ethanol (Gameiro, 2017) - that regulations were drawn up aimed at sustainability in the sugarcane industry.

The São Paulo Agri-Environmental Protocol¹, a symptomatic expression of this situation, was signed in 2007 between the São Paulo State Secretariats for Agriculture and Supply (SAA - Secretaria de Agricultura e Abastecimento) and for the Environment (SMA - Secretaria do Meio Ambiente) and the Union of the Sugarcane and Bioenergy Industry (UNICA - União da Indústria da Cana-de-Açúcar e Bioenergia). The following year, the same Secretariats signed the Protocol with the Organization of Sugarcane Planters of Brazil (ORPLANA - Organização dos Plantadores de Cana do Brasil). This protocol is part of the Green Ethanol Project, created in 2007 as part of SMA-SP’s strategic projects (Regra; Duarte; Malheiros, 2013).

The Agri-Environmental Protocol proposed a set of guidelines for the “sustainable” expansion of sugarcane production in the state, through voluntary adhesion by sugarcane mills and suppliers. The document lists justifications for its implementation, such as the importance of sugar-alcohol activity for the state’s economic development; the need for sustainable expansion planning; and, finally, encouraging the use of fuels from renewable sources (São Paulo, 2007b; 2008). Its directives included the springs and riparian forests protection, the proper disposal of pesticide packaging, and the implementation of technical plans to conserve soil and water resources. Its main directive concerned the gradual elimination of burning practice in sugarcane plantations, bringing forward the deadlines established by state law No. 11,241 of 2002, from 2031 to 2017 for non-mechanizable areas, and from 2021 to 2014 for mechanizable areas².

The signing of the Agri-Environmental Protocol boosted the mechanization of sugarcane cutting, which does not require prior burning. Thus, the protocol has helped to curb the reterritorialization of burning, but not the sugarcane expansion over new lands and waters (Cardoso; Sabadin, 2021). Supporting this expansion is the state classification into different areas for sugarcane exploitation considering the situation of the soil and water resources, proposed in the ZAA, also included in the Green Ethanol Project (São Paulo, 2007a).

The classification of the ZAA took into account the “climatic conditions, air quality, relief, soil, surface and groundwater availability and quality, existing and indicated conservation units including environmental protection areas and forest fragments”³, indicated by the FAPESP Program for Research into the Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity (Zoneamento Agroambiental..., online), as well as the actions programmed by the PAE Aquifers (São Paulo, 2011). It was then responsible for disciplining - using its own term - and organizing the expansion and occupation of land by the sugar-alcohol sector, as well as subsidizing public policies development aimed at issues related to the sector. In this sense, according to Figure 1, the ZAA subdivided the state of São Paulo into: suitable areas which correspond to 26% of the total area; suitable areas with environmental limitations, 45%; suitable areas with environmental restrictions, 28%; and, finally, 1% was classified as unsuitable areas (Zoneamento Agroambiental..., online).

Figure 1
Agri-environmental zoning of the state of São Paulo for the sugar-energy sector

In addition to the territorial division, the ZAA also proposed disciplining the use of water in industrial processing in order to meet the demands for a reduction in water consumption stipulated by the Agri-Environmental Protocol, to assume levels of 0.7 or 1m³/t of processed sugarcane, taking into account the specificities of the mill’s location (São Paulo, 2014). In order to achieve this goal, some measures were adopted by the signatory mills, such as: “closing circuits and reusing water, washing raw and dry cane and improving industrial processes”⁴ (São Paulo, 2014, p. 46). These measures suggested that reducing the burning practice would lead to a reduction in the water use in industrial processing - at least by the signatory mills which, by 2013, represented 86% of the state’s mills (São Paulo, 2014).

During this same period, socio-environmental concerns about water resources increased, especially groundwater from the Guarani Aquifer⁵. New environmental regulations and projects emerged at the multilateral level - such as the Guarani Aquifer System Project (2003 - 2009) - and at the state level, such as the PAE-Aquifer, launched in the same period as the PAE-Green Ethanol.

This historical retrospective of debates and public-environmental concerns based on the modern environmental issues emergence, although brief, provides us with support to reflect on strategic conversions in the grammar of sugarcane production in São Paulo. And it is in this scenario of new discursive productions that we will focus on next.

Water

We don’t use water in the agricultural sector for irrigation. Our irrigation comes from the process of extracting sugarcane for ethanol. [...] We use water from the wastewater sector of a part of the mill, plus vinasse. Our irrigation is with vinasse, not water (Mill 1 representative, interview granted on 05/26/2022).

I see irrigation in sugarcane in a very interesting way, as a technology that can really favor the sector as a whole [...] and about the sustainable use of water, I think that even in the face of the world’s focus on sustainability, I think that when we show that it will take longer to renew our sugarcane plantations, that we are being more efficient, that we can make this use efficiently [...] I think that when we show this, we achieve efficiency. So I see a lot of room and even in terms of sustainability (CANAONLINE, representative of the Research Center, 2021).

Taking as a reference the analysis carried out by Silva and Martins (2010) that sugarcane monoculture is established and sustained on the singular basis of the workforce and the environment exploitation - water and land, in particular - the assertion about the “non-use of water in the agricultural sector for irrigation” draws attention. Data published by the Sugarcane Irrigation Group (GIC - Grupo de Irrigação de Cana-de-açúcar), the Sugarcane Irrigation and Fertigation Group (GIFC - Grupo de Irrigação e Fertirrigação de Cana-de-açúcar) and by the sector itself in live streaming (CANAONLINE, 2021), allows us to extrapolate the well-known impressions about the use of water in rural spaces and move forward on the discursive constructions of the São Paulo sugarcane sector around the issue.

The statements made by the Mill 1 representatives and the Research Center show how the water issue is a field in dispute between their own peers, and that, despite having divergent discursive positions regarding sugarcane irrigation, both agents practice it, whether with water or wastewater. In this sense, the water resources problem can be approached here in terms of sugarcane irrigation practices and, at the interface, in terms of the strategic classificatory differentiation between water and wastewater.

Within the scope of the differentiation between irrigating with water or wastewater - and based on the testimony of the Mill 1 representative - there is an attempt to delimit a type of practice that is part of environmental regulations and to situate itself in a specific space for this water resource production - the industry. Supported by the guidelines established by the ZAA and the Agri-Environmental Protocol which propose closing the industrial water circuit by reusing part of this resource through crop fertigation together with vinasse, we can see a practice that is said to be environmentally sustainable and rational because it complies with the regulations established by the state.

To use water in the industrial sector, with a closed circuit, we have a permit, I don’t remember the amount now, but we have a permit. Let me give you an example: 1 million m³ of water for 24 months. And there are years when we use more, during the harvest months, but we don’t even use 50% of that volume. Today we use an average of 0.58 m³ of water per ton of cane crushed. So that’s very little compared to the 1 m³/t of crushed cane in the Agri-Environmental Protocol. So we’re well below, almost 50% of the objective of the plans that were designed back in 2007 (Mill 1 representative, interview granted on 05/26/2022).

Reinforcing the sustainability vision and compliance with conduct, the representative also points out that he uses less water than the 1m³/t of sugarcane set out in the Agri-Environmental Protocol. In these terms, in dialogue with the perspective taken by Boltanski and Thévenot (2020), we are faced with the discursive order construction around the use of water guided, above all, by the incorporation of criticism - figured in the respectability of the numerical parameters established by the Agri-Environmental Protocol for water consumption - and based on a moral dimension that links a cause to the common good and away from private interests - by even emphasizing a consumption lower than the determined parameter. It is, in this way, a new cognitive order for the sugarcane agroindustry that is based on strategic discourses capable of responding to socio-environmental criticism through its incorporation and appropriation of justice devices in order to position itself in an environmentally sustainable way in the contemporary debate.

At the same time, concern about the decline in sugarcane production due to climate change and water insecurity led to the emergence, in the early 2000s, of the “Sugarcane Calls for Water” project, which aims to publicize the “benefits of irrigation among agents in the sugar-energy sector and the sugarcane production chain” (Cana Pede Água, online). The idealization of irrigating sugarcane crops practice with water remains, now led by GIFC⁶, with the purpose of increasing sugarcane production without necessarily expanding the territory and also guaranteeing the sugarcane plantation longevity. From this point of view and based on these justifications, sugarcane irrigation would bring possible contributions in environmental and sustainability terms, in addition to overcoming projections of loss of income due to drought and the water crisis.

When we look historically at the “Sugarcane asks for water” project construction, as well as the formation of the GIC, we come across one of the environmental issue concrete points, reflecting pressures for the structuring and elaboration of environmentally sustainable policies aimed at water resources. If on the one hand the sugar-alcohol sector, together with the state, has designed a legal system that “disciplines” land occupation and the use of industrial water, on the other hand there is a strategic movement towards overcoming the hegemonic technical definition that delimits the need to apply water to sugarcane in places with low levels and/or irregular distribution of rainfall. In this context, there is the mobilization of a new discourse around sugarcane production, also based on the rational use of water and the technical and scientific apparatus, in order to achieve the sustainability required in contemporary times⁷.

However, even though some mills and economic agents are interested in using water in agricultural production, this practice is limited by the lack of legislation or legal instruments that effectively regulate the right to use this resource. Furthermore, there is an attempt to “diversify, change the concept of the legislation issue, try to change it, to try to attract the plant people, try to create, try to make the best use of this water. Like irrigation”⁸ (CANAONLINE, Mill 2 representative and GIFC councillor, 2021). The justification for this proposal is the positive nature of irrigation, both for the environment (as a sustainable practice) and for the economy - “Before [irrigation] was seen as not viable, it didn’t pay off in the state of São Paulo. Today we’re already seeing that, in one way or another, at certain times, it’s being sustainable and it’s making a profit”⁹ (CANAONLINE, representative of Mill 2 and GIFC board member, 2021). Furthermore, with regard to the granting of water use rights, provided for in Law 9.433/97, for the Unica representative this is an instrument that could hinder the sustainable practice of agricultural production and prevent environmental licensing from being obtained quickly.

Now the big question is the grant. [...] The permit is sometimes an obstacle because it takes a long time to obtain it and there is no good understanding of how to obtain it when there is irrigation. Since irrigation is not considered a priority use, but rather the sedentarization of animals and human use (CANAONLINE, Unica representative and GIFC manager, 2021).

The discursive maneuvers structured by the sugarcane agro-industry touch on different facets and strategies that move fluidly through this field to justify actions and achieve the objectives of the sector’s accumulation, as undertaken in the hypothesis of this study. In general, and in dialogue with the reflections on fire below, both the effort to affirm compliance with the guidelines laid down in the legislation and the effort to suggest new ones or to make the current rules more flexible express a sui generis practice in the sector, based on a historically authoritarian relationship with the state (Silva; Martins, 2010) which, depending on specific situations, demands specific proposals capable of fitting them into an environmentally sustainable logic without interfering with monetary accumulation.

Strictly speaking, the differentiation between irrigating with water and irrigating with wastewater is an expression of this nature. Taking Hannigan’s (2009) reflections as a reference, the efforts of sector representatives to formulate and discursively articulate an environmental reality around water resources which, as we have seen, and as Martins, Arbarotti and Campregher (2021) observe, will be disputed discursively in strategic management arenas, ends up proving and reinforcing a supposedly sustainable practice of the sugarcane agro-industry without, however, implying a change in attitude and effectively sustainable actions.

Fire

A fire is not the reason that is acting. A fire represents the forces of nature at work. It goes wherever it wants, burns whatever it wants, however it wants, whenever it wants... Without thinking about whether it’s a human being, an animal, or whether it’s on the edge of town [...]. Controlled burning is none of that. It’s something rational, thought out (Socicana representative, interview granted on 06/30/2022).

Our entry into the problem of fire in sugarcane fields is based on the strategic differentiation between controlled burning and fires, mobilized either in the semi-structured interviews we conducted with sugar-alcohol sector representatives, or in the sector’s information vehicles - such as live streams (CANAONLINE, 2022; CETESB, 2021) and campaigns to control, combat and prevent fires, promoted by the Brazilian Agribusiness Association of Ribeirão Preto (ABAG/RP).

In the mentioned section above, the sugarcane straw burning is seen as a controlled fire, while fires are fires that get out of hand. This control is governed by legislation that ensures, via a technical apparatus, that fire does not spread and that farming and forestry practices that use it are maintained. This classification of controlled burning, in particular, derives from federal decree no. 2.661 of 1998, which defines it as:

[...] the use of fire as a factor of production and management in agricultural or forestry activities, and for scientific and technological research purposes, in areas with previously defined physical limits¹⁰ (Brasil, 1998).

It is important to note that this decree is subsequent to using fire in sugarcane plantations, although it does regulate and legitimize it by defining technical and bureaucratic criteria. This classification, mobilized in the confrontation with fires - uncontrolled fire - is also called the use of fire as a clearing method, the burning of sugarcane straw, the agricultural practice of burning, burning, etc.

In general terms, these burns differ in purpose from burns used to prepare the land, such as cassava plantations in the Amazon (Fonseca-Morello et al., 2017); or even from fire management in areas of rugged terrain in the Cerrado, which allows access to small forest areas intended for agriculture (Borges et al., 2016). In sugarcane plantations, fire before cutting the cane is used to remove straw and leaves that are not needed for industrial processing and to prevent the proliferation of pests in the plantations, ensuring high productivity rates for mills and suppliers.

It is also important to point out that, in that context, the arguments mobilized by the sector to justify the burning use focused not only on yield and efficiency in sugarcane fields - that is, their particular interests - but also on guaranteeing the jobs of cane cutters and not using pesticides, which would result in contamination of the crops and groundwater (Blecher, 1989; Sabadin, 2024). The last two arguments are part of something more general, of a common good - something apparently detached from private interests (Boltanski; Thévenot, 2020). In this configuration, fire is part of production and, from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, all sugarcane cutting - manual or mechanized - followed this same logic.

Moving forward in the section prioritized here - that of the emergence of socio-environmental regulations aimed at sugarcane activity - burning practice (or the fire that is part of it) began to be assumed by the sugar-alcohol sector itself as a target for gradual elimination. The change in attitude towards burning practice - which did not occur unanimously and immediately among groups and agents in the sector - began with the Plan for the Elimination of Burning, in 1997, driving the introduction of harvesting machines designed to cut raw sugarcane, without prior burning (Gonçalves, 2001). On the other hand, it was with the signing of the São Paulo Agri-Environmental Protocol that this change based on the technological transition from manual to mechanized cutting - implying that the use of fire on sugarcane straw was dispensed with - was intensified (Sabadin, 2017).

In this context, the change in attitude targets, above all, the workforce overexploitation and the socio-environmental effects of soot and smoke emissions¹¹. These points serve as support for the construction of the Agri-Environmental Protocol’s metrics, which allows us to interpret this change through the key of incorporating criticism (Boltanski; Chiapello, 2020, p. 63) - that is, as an operation that responds “to the issues raised by criticism, in order to try to appease it and retain the adherence of its troops that may listen to the denunciations”¹².

With specific regard to the burning practice problem, sustainability would be achieved by resolving these two arguments. The scope of this change, however, goes beyond the response to these more local arguments. Supporting it was the possibility of opening up the market to ethanol fuel - the green, renewable fuel, not derived from oil - amid the global context of climate change (Gameiro, 2017). In the wake of these discussions, burning is seen as a barrier that needs to be overcome to achieve greater economic benefits for the sector.

It was, therefore, necessary to build an image and new practices aligned with the new reality based on the sustainability of sugarcane production and to convince all segments of the sector “that reality of fire is no longer sustainable” (Socicana representative, interview on 06/30/2002). Sustainable, in the context of the agent’s speech, denotes the idea that this reality can no longer be maintained, or sustained. In this sense, fire would no longer be part of the sugarcane industry, so the Agri-Environmental Protocol, by proposing to bring forward the deadlines for eliminating burning practice in the state set by law and speeding up the technological transition, would allow it to be erased in practice and discursively¹³ - also erasing the image of sugarcane cutting workers.

However, it is at the same time as the fires are extinguished - that is, with the end of the deadlines set by the Agri-Environmental Protocol - that the debate on fires begins to flare up. As we have already pointed out, it is when the image of the fires begins to hinder economic growth that strategies are developed - such as the Burn Elimination Plan and the Agri-Environmental Protocol, for example - to eliminate them. It is not about eliminating the fires, but about building strategies that aim to combat this “enemy”, this “new plague” in the sector (CANAONLINE, 2022).

If you explain to society that that fire that is happening there today, burning [...], since 2014, in fact, we are there with the burning eliminated here in the state of São Paulo, but it is difficult to explain to the population that “if you are seeing a fire in a sugarcane area, it is actually a loss for the mill... the mill is being a victim of this fire, or the sugarcane supplier is being a victim of this fire” (Unica representative, interview granted on 10/25/2021).

The introduction of this variable requires, in parallel with strategies to combat this enemy fire, the construction of justifications that make it possible to divert it from the image of sugarcane production. The differentiation between controlled burning and fires, highlighted in the opening statement of this topic, is used to achieve this detour.

This differentiation is also reflected in the slogan of the “Awareness, Prevention and Fighting Fires” campaign¹⁴, which was drawn up by ABAG/RP in partnership with mills and rural producers’ associations. In addition to disseminating information aimed at preventing fires, one of the campaign’s objectives is to show that “fire, that fire in sugarcane fields is not of interest to the productive sector”, as the ABAG/RP representative points out (interview conducted on 04/12/2022).

The campaign was created in 2015 after a large fire broke out in 2014 in the Santa Tereza Forest in Ribeirão Preto [...]. And on that day, we said “We need to do prevention work”, because, at that moment, we already knew that there was a man’s hand... It’s the man’s hand that was responsible for that fire. It’s only in the city that the buzz starts, right? “Oh, it was the sugarcane, it caught fire”, “It was someone who burned the sugarcane...”. And there’s no more sugar cane near that part of town. But we saw the need to show the population that the burning, that the fire in the sugarcane fields is not in the interests of the productive sector.

The maneuvers regarding this fight - whether through differentiation between burnings and fires or through a campaign - end up reinforcing the sector’s apparent lack of interest in uncontrolled fires. In effect, the fire, reduced to the classification of fires, ends up preventing questions from being asked about the fire of the burnings, even if considered residual.

Mobilizing this differentiation also has the effect of justifying that the sector’s previous interest in using fire was ensured by a technical and institutional apparatus that made it possible to avoid the damage caused by a fire. In this sense, the socio- environmental effects of burning seem to be nullified when compared to the catastrophic dimension conveyed by fires. Furthermore, classifying fires as being caused by the hand of a man helps to distance sugarcane activity from these occurrences.

Amid this responsibility for fire extended to everyone, the existence of the “Fire Awareness, Prevention and Fighting” campaign is an effort to legitimize a moral dimension, which links this responsibility to the common good. It thus reveals the symbolic complexity surrounding the history of fire in Brazil, sometimes mobilized as a social feat, sometimes as an ecological factor or disaster (Bailão, 2023).

In these movements, the contemporary sustainability principles take the form of guidelines for the discourses production and, depending on their strength, of the will to know about the socio-environmental behavior of the São Paulo sugar-alcohol sector. If in the water case, the differentiation between irrigation with water and irrigation with wastewater brings with it a repertoire of differentiation with a political purpose, the burning and fire modalities also do so, mobilizing differentiated knowledge and a similar justification grammar, morally accepted in the Sustainability values that the sector itself raises and produces in the public-environmental debate.

Concluding remarks

This article aimed to highlight the strategic changes in the classification of water and fire by the sugar-alcohol sector, especially after the introduction of socio-environmental regulations aimed at the sustainability of its production. The presented results corroborate our hypothesis that the strategies for changes in classification were not only aimed at overcoming the limitations that environmental regulations imposed on the sector’s productivity, but also broadened the scope of sustainability conceptions. By cooperating with environmental agencies in São Paulo, the sector becomes part of the environmental policies design related to its daily life. This movement circulated new justifications for engaging in responses to the socio-environmental criticisms historically aimed at it.

If global environmental demand required standards to “discipline” water use in industrial processing and eliminate fire use in sugarcane plantations, it was up to the sugar-alcohol sector to adapt to the conduct, supported by discursive - as well as technological and practical - innovations which, in the end, do not fail to reproduce a dynamic of accumulation. Part of this adaptation consists precisely in participating in the construction of an environmental agenda, assuming itself as a sector concerned with sustainability, concerned with promoting the common good.

In this scenario of discursive metamorphoses, we identified the public defense of irrigated sugarcane and the strategic differentiation between controlled burning and fires in sugarcane plantations in the state of São Paulo - two of the central aspects of the justification scenario shaped by the sector. Strictly speaking, these new grammars are based, on the one hand, on the argumentative capacity of the social actors involved and qualified to establish the legitimate environmental conditions surrounding the irrigation of sugarcane and the fire use in sugarcane fields, similar to Hannigan’s (2009) reflections on the social constructionism of the environment, and Bourdieu’s (2008) reflections on language and the acceptability of discourses; and, on the other hand, on the sustainability notion, which, as O’Connor (1994) rightly points out, is less an ecological issue than an ideological and political one.

In this context, it is striking how agroindustrial capital has shifted from being the target of criticism to presenting itself as part of it, by pragmatically controlling the terms of the debates developed within the territories’ scope on water and fires. To this end, the mobilization of disciplinary skills (water technicians, agronomists, engineers and lawyers) was of great value, allowing the sector to play a prominent role in the public-environmental debate in rural territories.

This process reveals a strategic - and therefore targeted - move by the sugar-alcohol industry to incorporate environmental criticism. Although with specific characteristics and different levels of investment in symbolic capital, the initiative to build new justifications for the moral regulation of socio-environmental demands on 21st-century capitalism remains a common practice.

The results presented here thus pose new challenges for thinking about the complex relationship between capitalism and environmental sustainability. The critique of objectified nature (Leff, 2014), an expression of the second contradiction of capital (O’Connor, 1994), has been crossed by new ways of ordering and enunciating discourses. And it is precisely in these new modes that capitalist action seems to succeed in incorporating critical resources that go beyond the material/economic dimension of capital but which acquire relevance as a moral form and as political production. Therefore, in dialog with the perspective taken by Boltanski and Chiapello (2020), it can be considered that the spirit of capitalism is being transformed to respond to the new needs of justification for the accumulation process preservation. In this way, the classic values and representations of individual efficiency and the common good are “greenlighted” for new dialogues between agents and institutions - in the latter case, notably the state and the markets

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

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• 1
  - For the political construction analysis of the São Paulo Agri-Environmental Protocol, see Sabadin (2017).
• 2
  - According to this law - and following the technology of sugarcane harvesting machines - mechanizable areas are those where the slope is equal to or less than 12%; non-mechanizable areas have a slope greater than this percentage (São Paulo, 2002).
• 3
  - Translated from: “condições climáticas, qualidades do ar, relevo, solo, disponibilidade e qualidade de águas superficiais e subterrâneas, unidades de conservação existentes e indicadas, incluindo áreas de proteção ambiental e fragmentos florestais” (Zoneamento Agroambiental…, online).
• 4
  - Translated from: “o fechamento de circuitos e o reuso da água, a lavagem da cana crua e a seco e o aprimoramento de processos industriais” (São Paulo, 2014, p. 46).
• 5
  - For the construction of the Guarani Aquifer System Project analysis, see Cardoso (2022).
• 6
  - Once its activities were completed, the GIC promoted the formation of the GIFC in 2012.
• 7
  - It is worth pointing out that the mobilization of the technical-scientific apparatus goes beyond the boundaries of the debate proposed here and reaches, as Martins (2015) rightly points out, political arenas of water governance, such as the River Basin Committees, a space that is intended to be participatory and democratic.
• 8
  - Translated from: “diversificar, mudar o conceito da questão da legislação, tentar mudar, para tentar atrair o pessoal de usina, tentar criar, tentar fazer para usar essa água da melhor forma. Como é a irrigação” (CANAONLINE, representante da Usina 2 e conselheiro GIFC, 2021)
• 9
  - Translated from: “Antes [a irrigação] era vista como não viável, que não compensa no Estado de São Paulo. Hoje a gente já está vendo que, de uma forma ou de outra, em determinados momentos, está sendo sustentável e está trazendo lucro” (CANAONLINE, representante da Usina 2 e conselheiro GIFC, 2021).
• 10
  - Translated from: “[...] o emprego do fogo como fator de produção e manejo em atividades agropastoris ou florestais, e para fins de pesquisa científica e tecnológica, em áreas com limites físicos previamente definidos” (Brasil, 1998).
• 11
  - Several studies have explored the social and/or environmental dynamics of sugarcane production in the state of São Paulo. For a more in-depth look at working conditions in sugarcane cutting, we would highlight those by Novaes (2007) and Silva (2008); and on the socio-environmental effects of burning, those by Andrade Jr. (2016) and Ribeiro (2008).
• 12
  - Translated from: “às questões levantadas pela crítica, para procurar apaziguá-la e conservar a adesão de suas tropas que poderão dar ouvidos às denúncias” (Boltanski; Chiapello, 2020, p. 63).
• 13
  - In figures, this erasure is illustrated by the jump in the mechanization index in the state of São Paulo, which leaves the 2007/2008 harvest with an index of 40.7% and reaches the 2020/21 harvest with 96.64% (Fredo; Vicente; Baptistella, 2008; Fredo; Baptistella; Caser, 2022). As far as the Ribeirão Preto administrative region is concerned, in the 2020/21 harvest, this rate reaches 95.83%.
• 14
  - The campaign’s slogan between 2015-2017 was “Fire: different from controlled burning”; between 2018 and 2019, “Fires: Prevent” and “Fires: Prevention is Everyone’s Duty” and, more recently, in 2022, “Fire is fire” (ABAG/RP, online).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 July 2025
• Date of issue
  2025

History

• Received
  27 Dec 2023
• Accepted
  14 Oct 2024