Luís Oliveira and his gang get up at dawn to take a rickety bus to Fazenda Agua Doce, a sugarcane farm in central São Paulo state where the heat regularly tops 40 degrees.

They cut the cane by hand with a machete-like tool, the podão, the design of which has not moved on much since its invention.

Water breaks are short and food meagre and unappetising.

Such conditions have prompted a barrage of criticism from the European Union that Brazil, the world’s largest ethanol exporter, is a nest of poor labour and environmental practices.

The criticism, and the €0.19 ($0.29, £0. ... Read full article