Mexico eyes more sugar cane for ethanol

Reuters.com
Thu Jun 12, 2008 5:23pm EDT

By Mica Rosenberg and Adriana Barrera

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's agriculture minister is pushing sugar growers to increase the total area planted with cane by up to 13 percent between now and 2012 to provide material for ethanol production.

Alberto Cardenas told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that farmers should aim to plant up to 100,000 more hectares of sugar cane across the country to reach the ministry's long-term goal of producing over 800 million liters of ethanol annually.

"We have almost 30 million hectares of land ready for planting and we are only using between 22 and 22.5 million of it," said the minister.

Some of the unused land could also be planted with corn, as food prices skyrocket on international markets, he said.

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