The Brazilian social fuel stamp program: Few strikes, many bloopers and stumbles

Abstract Right after the Brazilian federal government started defending a platform of social inclusion, income redistribution, and economic development of the North and Northeast regions of the country, in 2002, it landed the Social Fuel Stamp, a government program that was created in 2004 to make feasible election promises, in addition to regionalize biodiesel production, and support for the diversification of its raw materials through feedstocks that are plentiful in both regions, such as castor and palm. The biodiesel market in Brazil was very incipient then, while the soy market was already well established and dominated by large landowners and big agribusiness companies from other regions but these aforementioned. Therefore, they were the ones better off to benefit from and take advantage of the soon to be created biodiesel chain. Now, after thirteen years of its inception, many authors have been thwarted by the plan. Hence, the purpose of this work is to ascertain whether the targets initially proposed by the government were fully met, seeking to identify possible drawbacks. In order to do this, our approach will be based on the analysis of the Brazilian government's public data and the review of the literature on the subject, thus the relevance to it lies on the feedback presented herein that could be of help for any realignment of the program. Based on our analysis, we have come to a conclusion that the Social Fuel Stamp program has had very little success and many setbacks along the years since its takeoff in 2004.