gorgastic
09-21-03, 05:50 AM
Hmm....if it's in the New York Times then it has to be tr00 eh? :gun:
UIABÁ, Brazil — It takes only a trip on the busy but rutted highway that leads north from here to understand how an area of the Amazon jungle larger than New Jersey could have been razed over the course of just a year.
Where the jungle once offered shelter to parrots and deer, the land is now increasingly being cleared for soybeans, Brazil's hottest cash crop.
Soy cultivation is booming, driven by a coincidence of global demand from as far off as China and the local politics of state where the new governor was known as the Soybean King even before his election last October.
Today soybeans are eating up larger and larger chunks of the Amazon, leading to a 40 percent jump in deforestation last year, to nearly 10,000 square miles. Even the pastures where cows grazed until recently are being converted, pushing a cattle herd that has become the world's largest even deeper into the agricultural frontier.
"The new factor in the equation of Amazon deforestation is clearly soybeans and the appeal they hold for agribusiness," Stephan Schwartzmann, director of the Washington-based group Environmental Defense, said after a visit to the region in July.
A dry season that was unusually parched also appears to have figured in the surge in deforestation from August 2001 to July 2002, according to the country's National Institute for Space Research. So did a certain laxness in law enforcement, traditional during an election year, and a weak currency that made farming for export especially attractive, analysts have suggested.
But experts are unanimous in warning that as soybean farming continues to spread through the adjacent southern Amazon states of Mato Grosso and Pará, the threat to the Amazon ecological system is likely to worsen in the next few years.
Environmental groups had hoped that Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, would take steps to combat deforestation. But Mr. da Silva has instead emphasized increasing agricultural production to swell exports and feed the urban poor, a position that has earned him criticism even from allies.
"The Amazon is not untouchable," Mr. da Silva said during a visit to the region in July. That view is strongly supported by Blairo Maggi, the new governor here in the state of Mato Grosso, who has repeatedly dismissed any concerns about deforestation.
Mr. Maggi, elected last year as the candidate of the Popular Socialist Party, and his family own one of Brazil's largest soy producers, transporters and exporters. The Soybean King, as the Brazilian press is fond of calling him, advocates soybeans as an engine of growth and development in the Amazon.
In fact, Mr. Maggi has called for nearly tripling the area planted with soybeans during the next decade in Mato Grosso, whose name means dense jungle. His own company, Grupo Maggi, announced early this year that it intended to double the area it has in production.
"To me, a 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here," Mr. Maggi said in an interview at his office here in Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso. "We're talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about."
Economists say that the main spur to the soybean boom is the emergence of a middle class in China, much of whose newly disposable income has been spent on a richer, more varied diet. During the past decade, China has been transformed from a net exporter of soybeans to the world's largest importer in some years of whole soybeans as well as oil and meal byproducts.
At the same time, the recent outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe has led to a sharp shift away from using ground-up animal body parts in feed, further increasing demand for soy protein for cattle and pigs.
Initially, the planting was focused in savanna in the area that the Brazilian government defines as Legal Amazonia, but which is not truly forest. But as soy prices rise, producers are pushing northward into the heart of the Amazon, especially along the 1,100-mile highway called BR163, which links this city to the Amazon port of Santarém.
UIABÁ, Brazil — It takes only a trip on the busy but rutted highway that leads north from here to understand how an area of the Amazon jungle larger than New Jersey could have been razed over the course of just a year.
Where the jungle once offered shelter to parrots and deer, the land is now increasingly being cleared for soybeans, Brazil's hottest cash crop.
Soy cultivation is booming, driven by a coincidence of global demand from as far off as China and the local politics of state where the new governor was known as the Soybean King even before his election last October.
Today soybeans are eating up larger and larger chunks of the Amazon, leading to a 40 percent jump in deforestation last year, to nearly 10,000 square miles. Even the pastures where cows grazed until recently are being converted, pushing a cattle herd that has become the world's largest even deeper into the agricultural frontier.
"The new factor in the equation of Amazon deforestation is clearly soybeans and the appeal they hold for agribusiness," Stephan Schwartzmann, director of the Washington-based group Environmental Defense, said after a visit to the region in July.
A dry season that was unusually parched also appears to have figured in the surge in deforestation from August 2001 to July 2002, according to the country's National Institute for Space Research. So did a certain laxness in law enforcement, traditional during an election year, and a weak currency that made farming for export especially attractive, analysts have suggested.
But experts are unanimous in warning that as soybean farming continues to spread through the adjacent southern Amazon states of Mato Grosso and Pará, the threat to the Amazon ecological system is likely to worsen in the next few years.
Environmental groups had hoped that Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, would take steps to combat deforestation. But Mr. da Silva has instead emphasized increasing agricultural production to swell exports and feed the urban poor, a position that has earned him criticism even from allies.
"The Amazon is not untouchable," Mr. da Silva said during a visit to the region in July. That view is strongly supported by Blairo Maggi, the new governor here in the state of Mato Grosso, who has repeatedly dismissed any concerns about deforestation.
Mr. Maggi, elected last year as the candidate of the Popular Socialist Party, and his family own one of Brazil's largest soy producers, transporters and exporters. The Soybean King, as the Brazilian press is fond of calling him, advocates soybeans as an engine of growth and development in the Amazon.
In fact, Mr. Maggi has called for nearly tripling the area planted with soybeans during the next decade in Mato Grosso, whose name means dense jungle. His own company, Grupo Maggi, announced early this year that it intended to double the area it has in production.
"To me, a 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here," Mr. Maggi said in an interview at his office here in Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso. "We're talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about."
Economists say that the main spur to the soybean boom is the emergence of a middle class in China, much of whose newly disposable income has been spent on a richer, more varied diet. During the past decade, China has been transformed from a net exporter of soybeans to the world's largest importer in some years of whole soybeans as well as oil and meal byproducts.
At the same time, the recent outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe has led to a sharp shift away from using ground-up animal body parts in feed, further increasing demand for soy protein for cattle and pigs.
Initially, the planting was focused in savanna in the area that the Brazilian government defines as Legal Amazonia, but which is not truly forest. But as soy prices rise, producers are pushing northward into the heart of the Amazon, especially along the 1,100-mile highway called BR163, which links this city to the Amazon port of Santarém.