A aplicabilidade da norma regulamentadora NR-31 em relação aos perigos e riscos identificados nas atividades de plantio, cultivo e colheita de cana-de-açúcar.

Abstract

The sugarcane industry underwent an intense period of expansion and transformation in the first two decades of the 21st century. The area planted with sugarcane more than doubled in Brazil between 2000 and 2019, mainly to meet the growing domestic demand for ethanol. Regions in the center-south of Brazil were taken over by new companies, with factories built from scratch and supplied by plantations where cutting is mechanized. Foreign groups have been coming to the country to invest in the sector, encouraging mergers and acquisitions. The new sugarcane boom is only comparable to what was seen after the launch of the Proalcohol program in the 70s, which was set against a backdrop of intense global debate on sustainability. In 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, the world's major nations signed a treaty to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This treaty formed the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, which obliges signatories to reduce their own emissions. To contribute to the debate on the evolution of working conditions in the sugarcane sector, this work aims to analyze the applicability of the implementation of NR-31 in a sugarcane company through a case study. It was concluded that the improvements implemented in the company in recent years were of a preventive nature, but there is a need for improvement actions regarding the training of employees and monitoring, supervision during the execution of activities, seeking to provide a safer work environment and improving the performance of employees.

Keywords: Sugarcane; Safety; NR-31.