Sugar cane ethanol pioneer Brazil, which touts the efficiency and environmental qualities of its biofuel, could soon begin making it from less-efficient corn to soak up excess grains in remote areas.
The combined industry and governmental steering committee for corn, which met on Wednesday, said it had commissioned a study by state researcher Embrapa to look at the viability of making ethanol in corn-growing state Mato Grosso.
Ethanol biofuel has supplanted gasoline as the main fuel in Brazil's cars since the advent of flex-fuel engines, which can run solely on ethanol or gasoline or both mixed. But the fuel struggles to compete with gasoline on price in areas far from the cane-growing states in the southeast.
The chamber's idea is to make cheaper ethanol locally to power cars and agricultural machinery and give producers an alternative outlet for their produce which, for export, must otherwise travel hundreds of miles (kilometers) to the ports.
The corn would be processed at the handful of cane ethanol mills in the state to occupy them through some of the months-long shutdown period when they are without cane to crush, de Sousa said.
