Brazil's Government Pleads For 10 Years To Stop Ag. Sector Deforestation - Reuters

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BRASILIA - Brazil's farm sector is only just realizing the need to protect the Amazon rain forest but it could be many years before deforestation stops, the agriculture minister said.

Brazil's fast-growing agriculture business, one of the world's biggest food providers, is often blamed for much of the destruction of the Amazon. Government authorities, many farm product traders and some producers are beginning to accept the need to conserve the world's largest rain forest but appropriate policies and resources were still inadequate, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes told Reuters.

"Today Brazil has the conscience not to cut down trees to increase its production," he said in an interview on Monday. "The government has decided -- no more deforestation. Now, it will be at least a decade before the policies are in place and working."

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly boasted that Brazil reduced deforestation by 50 percent over the last two years. But record commodity prices are increasing the pressure to make Amazonian land productive and deforestation has increased again since last August, the environment ministry said.

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